


The Children of Egypt

by Cynder2013



Series: Sisters by the Styx [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Kane Chronicles - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Major Character Injury, Multi, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, POV First Person, POV Multiple, POV Third Person, Swearing, overdramatic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 24
Words: 41,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23881360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynder2013/pseuds/Cynder2013
Summary: Sapphire is ready for a summer full of monster fighting lessons, rock climbing, sword fighting, and Capture the Flag. You know, a normal demigod summer. What she is not prepared for is a new power, a mortal enemy, and a quest that is anything but normal.(Originally started April 2015.)
Relationships: Anubis/Sadie Kane/Walt Stone, Carter Kane/Zia Rashid, Leo Valdez/Sapphire Banks (PJO/HoO OC)
Series: Sisters by the Styx [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719322
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	1. Sapphire I

Running for your life sucks. Running for your life on the first day of July while having whole mountain ranges thrown at you is a torture on par with those of the Field of Punishment.

‘ _Left!’_ Jay warned. Sapphire darted far to her left and just barely missed being hit by a ginormous rock. OK, so it wasn’t an entire mountain, but it sure felt like it. She didn’t even have the breath to say thank you.

 _‘How much farther is it?’_ Jay asked. He wasn’t breathing as heavily as Sapphire, but his fur was still sticking to his sides.

Jay, by the way, was a cat. Specifically, he was one of the cats that had been grown from the teeth from the Smithsonian’s sabre-toothed tiger exhibit seven years before. He had been one of the gifts from Sapphire’s mother and father on her sixteenth birthday. The other gift had been a Stygian Iron _wakizashi_ , which made up a matched pair with her _katana_ , Swift Death. Her father had apparently wanted to make sure that Sapphire survived her first year before investing in a perfect _daishō_ for her.

Sapphire was a demigod, and demigods don’t tend to have long lives. She probably had double demigod scent as her father was Hades and her mother was Persephone. Don’t ask how.

Another rock flew over her head and landed somewhere in the trees to her right. ‘ _My gods, why won’t he just give up?’_ she thought to Jay.

‘ _Think later, run now,’_ the cat panted. Sapphire replied by putting on a burst of speed. The two of them were running through the stretch of Rouge Valley that their town was built around. The high school backed onto it from the south and the Old Village lined its northern edge, with the two parts of town joining about five kilometres to their west. They were headed towards the school because that’s where possible reinforcements were waiting.

Possibly.

Assuming Leo wasn’t late.

There was a satyr, Sapphire didn’t know who it was, who had flagged two new demigods in Sapphire’s school. Despite the claiming promise that Percy had wrested out of the gods, Canada didn’t get paid much attention to when it came to recruitment. Mr. D probably thought they were too far away.

Dionysius was famously lazy when it came to anything other than wine, parties, and gaming.

Leo had volunteered himself and Festus, his bronze dragon who was also occasionally a flying warship, to pick up the satyr and the new demigods. He also said that he’d pick up any demigods in the area that wanted a free ride, something that Chiron couldn’t say no to, even though Sapphire and Malcolm, Annabeth’s brother, were the only other demigods nearby. Malcom lived in Ajax, which was about half an hour away.

Sapphire saw the grey bricks of the high school through the trees ahead of her. She let out a mental cheer when she caught sight of the telltale bronze plating of the _Argo II_. Unfortunately, she also heard crashes in the woods behind her and realized that her pursuer had decided to stop throwing rocks and actually try to catch her. _Great._

She broke through the tree line ten seconds later. The _Argo II_ was sitting on the football field right in front of the chain-link fence that separated the field from the backyards of a row of houses, one of which was Sapphire’s house. After running a few more meters, Sapphire stopped to catch her breath.

“Good morning!” Leo called from the deck of his ship. Sapphire raised a hand in greeting. Then she turned around and twisted the skull on the silver ring she wore on her right hand. Swift Death appeared first in her right hand, then her _wakizashi_ in her left hand.

“Just one little thing I have to take care of!” she shouted over her shoulder. “A little extra firepower would be nice!” Leo didn’t have time to answer as at that moment a Laistrygonian-sized man burst through the trees. His upper arms were about the size of cannons and his legs were spotted with green scales. He had a thick scar that went down the centre of his face and neck and disappeared under his shirt. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt that read “THIS IS MY DEMIGOD KILLING SHIRT”.

He had obviously not come by for milk and cookies.

“Half-bloods!” he bellowed when he saw the ship. “Come out so I can tie you to trees and rip you apart!”

Sapphire coughed and he looked around, confused. “Down here pinhead! Or, should that be pine-head?”

Sinis the pine-bender looked down and just missed seeing Sapphire slice through his ankle. He yelled in pain, causing Jay to yelp in fright and turn into a giant sabre-toothed cat whose form occasionally flickered to show his entire skeleton.

Hey, Percy had a pet hellhound. Sapphire could have a pet Spartoi-cat.

Sapphire dove out of the way as Sinis reached down to try and grab her. Jay yowled and launched himself at the nearest part of the half-giant, which happened to be his face. Sinis howled and staggered back, giving Sapphire time to run around him and take her swords to his other ankle, which crumpled under his weight. She also had time to wonder exactly how she had gotten into this mess, and decided it was probably because she had run towards the place where flying deer were coming from rather than away from it.

Seeing deer catapulted through the air with a bent pine tree was not at the top of her bucket list, or at the bottom, or even on the list.

Jay tore at Sinis’ face with his claws, and leapt clear when the man tried to grab him. After a few more chops with her swords, Sinis was no longer able to even try to stand due to the fact that his feet were a meter away from him. “Like father like son, eh?” Sinis screamed wordlessly. “I don’t think you’d fit on any of his beds though. Maybe we should take a little off the top?” On cue, a fireball flew over her head and hit Sinis’ already mauled face. “Nice shot! Maybe a little lower?” The second fireball burned right through Sinis’ chest, making his shirt read “MY DEOD KING SRT”. Since he was missing a mouth, and most of his face, Sinis didn’t say anything as he crumbled to dust. 

Jay shook monster dust out of his fur before shrinking back into his house-cat self. _‘Is that what normally happens around here?’_ he asked.

“That was actually my first monster since March,” Sapphire replied. She put her swords away, and then shrieked as someone grabbed her shoulders from behind. Taking from Annabeth’s lessons, she grabbed the person’s wrist and sent them flying over her head and onto the ground.

“Ow,” Leo said once he’d gotten his breath back.

Sapphire laughed and helped him up. “Sorry.”

Leo grinned and gave her a quick kiss. “It’s OK.”

They walked back to the _Argo II_. Festus clicked at Leo. “Yeah, that was stupid. You don’t have to rub it in.” More clicking. “When I get judo flipped by Annabeth, which will never happen because I’m not that stupid.” More clicking and a creak, accompanied by the bronze dragon head rolling his eyes.

Sapphire smiled. “Festus lecturing you about the dangers of sneaking up on demigod girls again?” Leo nodded. “You should listen to him.”

Sapphire and Leo climbed onto the ship and helped Jay up after them. Jay immediately walked over to the figurehead and demanded to be introduced. “Jay, this is Festus, who saved our butts back there. Festus, this is Jay, who you will not eat.”

Leo pulled the rope ladder up onto the deck. “You’re stuff is already on board. Did you say goodbye?”

“This morning at breakfast.” Sapphire leaned over the railing and gave Festus a rub under his chin. “I’m the last to arrive?” Leo started pulling up the anchor and Sapphire rushed over to give him a hand.

“Everyone else is getting settled below decks.” Leo replied once the anchor was back on the ship. He picked up a Wii remote and gave it a shake, causing the sails to unfurl. “Malcolm, Doren Bush, and the new demigods.” The way he said new demigods, with a smile on his face, made Sapphire suspicious. He was definitely hiding something.

“Anyone I know?” she asked. His smile got bigger. Definitely someone she knew. The only way Leo would know that was if it was someone he’d met when he and Nico visited, which they had done a few times. There were a lot of people on that list. “Who?”

The ship started rocking and slowly rose into the air. Sapphire idly wondered what the people walking by the school saw the ship as. A flock of seagulls? Leo pushed the A button on his Wii remote. Air filled the sails and the ship gained enough altitude to fly over the school building. Sapphire felt her stomach twinge as they rose into the air. She reminded herself that the _Argo II_ was a strict no-strike zone for Zeus, no matter who was on the ship.

Leo looked up from his controls. His eyes shone with amusement. “Why not head below and see for yourself?”


	2. Sapphire II

The first things Sapphire heard when she got below decks were alternating threats and curses aimed at a ‘donkey legged freak’. She was sure that Doren was absolutely _thrilled_. Malcolm was standing outside of the room where the shouter was, leaning against the wall and massaging his temples. He had the look on his face that children of Athena got when they were absolutely exasperated. If the person behind door number one was the person Sapphire thought it was (and was really hoping it wasn’t), then he had a good reason.

Malcolm looked at her as she approached. “Hi, Sapphire. Who was your noisy friend?”

Sapphire leaned against the wall on the other side of the door frame. “Sinis, son of Procrustes,” she replied. She jerked her head towards the door. “Who’s yours?”

Malcolm sighed and rolled his eyes. “Cora Willis, daughter of some rich guy.” Sapphire groaned. “You know her?”

“Don’t I?” Cora was only the girl who did her best to make life hell for Sapphire and her friends, Ed and Elizabeth. ‘Whore’ and ‘freak’ were her least hurtful insults. On the bright side, if she was a demigod, Sapphire could now beat her up horribly without getting in too much trouble. “Would you like me to try to shut her up?”

“Be my guest. The only reason she’s still talking is that none of us had anything to use as a gag.” Malcolm wished her luck, and then headed for the med bay to get some Tylenol.

Sapphire breathed in and out a few times before she opened the door. In what had formerly been Piper’s bedroom, Doren Bush, a blond satyr with a scraggly beard, was sitting on the edge of the bed reading a magazine while Cora Willis yelled at him from the centre of the room, where she was tied to a chair. Cora was first to notice Sapphire’s entrance, and she immediately turned her threats on her. Sapphire tried to not pay attention to what Cora was saying, because she knew if she did she would hear something that would make her unsheathe her swords. If that happened, there’d be no going back.

Instead of punching Cora in the face, something she also wanted to do, Sapphire flicked her wrist. Cora’s own shadow rose up and Sapphire shoved its head into Cora’s mouth and wrapped the rest of it around her head.

“Nice to see you too, Cora,” Sapphire said after the other girl had shut up. Then she looked at Doren, who had looked up from his magazine when Cora stopped yelling.

“Sapphire Banks, I presume?” he said in a raspy voice that made it sound like he had a pack-a-day cigarette habit. Actually, that was only his cover. Sapphire recognized his face from the group of smokers that she passed when she actually felt like walking to school, not just hopping a fence. She wondered if Chiron had actually agreed to that cover, or if smoking was just easier to explain than ‘I breathed in Greek fire and coughed it back out’. 

That isn't what actually happened. Probably.

Sapphire rolled her eyes. “You were in my Latin class, Doren.” There was also that. Doren shrugged and went back to his magazine. Sapphire rolled her eyes again, and decided that she may as well look for the other newbie now that Cora had shut up.

Seven of the eight bedrooms on the _Argo II_ had been cleared out after the war was over. Sapphire didn’t bother checking Leo’s room because it was just too dangerous to leave a newbie, or anyone other than Leo, in there alone. It took her about thirty seconds after that to find the other newbie, because his life-force was very well known to her. She opened the door to Percy’s old room and saw the last demigod aboard standing on the other side of the room, looking at the faded Aquaman poster Percy had left on the wall. “Ed!”

Sapphire’s best friend turned around and gave a small smile, which was a hundred-watt grin for him. Sapphire ran across the room and gave him a hug. “So, I’m a demigod,” he said unnecessarily. “I swear, I would have told you, but Doren came to get me about thirty minutes ago.”

“I had no idea,” Sapphire said. “It explains why you were so good at taking down the Nemean Lion in December though.” Around Christmas, Leo and Nico had come to visit. On Christmas Eve they’d been woken up by the Nemean Lion bulldozing through the chain-link fence that separated the backyard(s) from the football field. Ed, whose bedroom was at the back of his house, had been woken by the fighting. He had helped kill the monster by raining bricks down on it until it roared, at which point Leo threw a fireball down its gullet. Ta da, no more lion. The pelt had turned into a fur lined trench coat, which Leo had claimed and then given to Ed because it was not his style.

Ed was wearing the coat, which was probably the only reason he had been able to stand up to Sapphire’s bone-crunching hug. Learning to swing a sword around for a whole summer built a lot of arm muscle. Sapphire punched Ed’s chest lightly. “Your cabin mates are going to be so jealous of you! You haven’t even been to camp yet and you already have a spoil of war.”

Ed blushed. “Well—” He was interrupted by the entire ship tipping alarmingly far to the left, to port if you wanted to use proper nautical lingo. “What the—?”

Leo’s voice rang though the ship. “ALL DEMIGODS ON DECK! I REPEAT, ALL DEMIGODS ON DECK! JUST NOT THE NOISY ONE! OH SCHIST!” There was a loud thump and the broadcast stopped. Sapphire and Ed looked at each other.

“I guess we’d better see what’s going on,” Ed said nervously.

“A spoil of war and a real fight.” Sapphire grinned. “Boy, are you going to be envied.”

* * *

Before they went on deck, Sapphire reached into the shadows and pulled out two knives. It was a little trick she had discovered after she had re-read _The Throne of Fire._ She decided to try storing things in the shadows like magicians did the Duat, hopefully not losing limbs in the process. She’d started with a sheet of paper and then, when she’d gotten it back without burns or bite marks, worked her way up through rocks and paperclips until she was now confident enough to stow light weaponry.

Nico had been intrigued by the idea and, after he’d confirmed with their father that it was safe, had also started practicing. However, he hadn’t yet managed to store and reclaim anything larger, or more dangerous, than a plastic spork.

Sapphire handed both knives to Ed. She pointed out a button on the first one. “Don’t press this unless you want to fire the blade.” Then she indicated the epsilon carved into the base of the blade of the second. “And don’t touch this or the knife will turn into an Eiffel Tower keychain.” With her instructions done with, the two of them followed Malcolm up onto the deck.

Immediately they had to duck so that they didn’t get impaled by a Celestial bronze arrow.

“Holy cow,” Ed muttered. Sapphire nodded in agreement, though he wasn’t actually looking at her. She could blame him, the five life-sized griffin automatons flying around the ship spewing either fire or arrows _were_ pretty distracting. Judging by the Greek eta that was branded on each griffin’s forehead, Hephaestus needed to get tighter security.

He wouldn’t send deadly automations after his own son’s flying ship, right? 

Leo was running around the deck putting out fires while simultaneously dodging arrows. Malcolm was shooting arrows two at a time at the griffins, and had managed to lock the jaw of one of them and shoot an eye out of another. Festus was blowing fire at the rival automatons, but it wasn’t really doing much. Were all Hephaestus-brand automatons fireproof, or was it only the deadly ones?

Jay was in oversized sabre-toothed tiger form and as they watched he jumped three meters into the air and ripped through the side of an arrow-slinging griffin with his claws. His clawing sent the griffin spinning out of control, until it was so confused that it started firing arrows at its own rear end. Jay landed on the deck, sat down, and licked his paw before leaping up to continue shredding it into scrap. 

Sapphire seriously loved that cat.

Leo caught sight of Ed and Sapphire as he turned to another fire. “There are purple grenades in a box next to Festus,” he told Ed. “Throw them at their wings!”

While Ed ran to the helm, dogging arrows on the way, Sapphire stripped off her gloves, picked up a few shadows and aimed them at the fire-breathing griffin. The shadows flowed upwards like ink until they wrapped tightly around the griffin’s neck. The griffin clawed at the shadows. A few rips appeared.

They didn’t last.

Sapphire grinned as she formed the shadows into a handheld garrotte, which she then used to behead the metal creature. The headless automaton turned around in a circle before falling out of the sky, narrowly missing the side of the ship.

Two down, three to go.

Ed had stuck the Eiffel Tower knife into his coat pocket and was now hefting a purple, lemon-sized grenade. He pulled the pin and threw it at the griffin that had just managed to get its mouth unstuck. The grenade hit just above the griffin’s right wing and immediately released purple goop that got in every crevice of its armor. The goop quickly hardened, eventually stopping the griffin’s wings from moving and causing it to go into a downward spiral that presumably ended when it hit the ground.

They were probably somewhere above Toronto at that point. Hopefully the falling automatons weren’t causing too many traffic problems.

Malcolm took down another fire-breather after he stuck it with about a dozen arrows. That griffin exploded, sending Celestial bronze shrapnel raining down on the rear half of the deck. Sapphire saw a piece that was easily as big as a serving dish and was glad that none of them had been hit.

The last griffin was a fire-breather and it was more than twice the size of any of the others. Its bronze feathers shone red and orange, and its eyes were shining rubies.

It would have been beautiful, if it wasn’t trying to kill them. 

The griffin reared up and blew a stream of flames at them. The flames hit Leo, who batted them into a nearby cloud. Malcolm was out of arrows and the griffin wasn’t in a good position for Ed to throw a goop grenade at it. Jay sprang as high as he could and raked his claws across the griffin’s underside. He left behind a few good gashes that immediately started dropping sparks on the deck.

“Styx,” Leo cursed. He started running around the deck again, stamping out the sparks before they could send them all up in smoke.

“Wonderful,” Sapphire muttered. She readied her shadow-lasso, preparing to do her ink-to-garrote trick again. Unfortunately, the larger griffin also had a faster reload time. It dove towards the deck and blasted fire at them again.

They were not ready for it.

The stream of flames ran up the right side of Malcolm’s body causing him to yell in pain. He fell to the deck, dropping his bow beside him. Sapphire shrieked when she saw him fall, and didn’t notice the fire cutting through the air towards her until it engulfed her left leg. She screamed and doused the hot yellow flames with her own blackish purple fire. Her leg didn’t hurt yet, but it would soon. The shadows she had been holding dispersed and she wasn’t able to get them back.

Malcolm had somehow managed to practice stop, drop, and roll, successfully putting out most of the fire that was clinging to him, Leo had extinguished the rest. Malcolm lay on the deck, groaning quietly. The skin on the right side of his body was mostly red and blistered, but some of it was charred black or a waxy yellow-white. There was swelled, leathery brown skin where his eye was supposed to be, and the right half of his lips was swollen and blistering.

Ed shouted and threw a grenade at the griffin. It hit it right below its chin and the goop oozed out, hardening until the griffin was frozen in a rearing position. Unfortunately, it could still fly and breathe fire. Ed readied another grenade, but was pushed out of the way by Leo when the automaton spat a flame at him.

Sapphire gritted her teeth and pushed herself up. She hadn’t even noticed that she had fallen to the deck. Festus was shouting loudly at the griffin, challenging it to a duel.

“ _No need,”_ Sapphire told him. She pointed at the griffin and gathered all her concentration. When it opened its mouth to finish them off, she sent a black-cold stream of deathfire right down its gullet. If the griffin could make facial expressions, it would have looked like it just swallowed an owl pellet. It jerked back with its mouth wide open and its eyes spun in their sockets. Its feathers flapped.

Leo was the first to figure out what was going to happen. “Get down!” he shouted, dropping to the deck and covering his head with his arms. “She’s gonna blow!” 

Ed crouched behind the console and pulled his Nemean Lion skin coat up over his head. Jay shrank down and hid under the end of Ed’s trench coat. Sapphire pushed herself as far forwards as her injured leg would allow, which was just far enough to put her beside Malcolm. She threw herself over him and wove shadows together to shield him. She had just enough time to protect her head with her arms before she heard a loud boom.

Shrapnel whistled.

Sapphire felt many somethings hit her back. Pain sliced through her. Her nerves screamed.

Then everything went black.


	3. Sapphire III

Sapphire got the first clue that she was in the camp infirmary when she opened her eyes and saw blinding white curtains. She squeezed her eyes shut. It was highly likely that the Apollo kids kept the dividing curtains neon to deter demigods from getting serious injuries. Not that it worked.

She heard someone cough and someone else start to sing. That was her second clue. Whenever there was a serious injury it always culminated in an increase in the sale of lozenges at the camp store because the Apollo campers were singing hymns around the clock to help with healing. She turned her head and realized, a bit late, that she was laying front-first on the bed and that her back felt like it was being pricked with hundreds of needles. It was more than a little uncomfortable.

Someone lightly touched Sapphire’s shoulder, causing the pins-and-needles feeling to intensify. She opened her eyes carefully; she didn’t want to burn her retinas again. Ed sighed with relief. Sapphire knew that sigh. It was the same one she had given when Nico had woken up after being knocked unconscious by a Hyperborean (long story).

“How long?” she croaked.

Ed knew at once what she was asking. “Two days. Will Solace said… Hang on.” He stepped out of her line of sight. After a few seconds he held a sticky square to her lips. “Open up.” Sapphire complied and Ed dropped the piece of ambrosia into her mouth. It was only the second time she’d eaten ambrosia, so she was still surprised when she tasted _melktert,_ the sweet, creamy dessert that her dad always made for birthdays. She chewed and swallowed. The pricking in her back faded a little and the pain in her leg, pain she hadn’t even noticed, lessened.

“What happened?” she asked. “Also, two days? Seriously?” Whatever happened couldn’t have been so bad that she was out of it for forty-eight hours.

Right?

Ed sat down in a chair where Sapphire could see him. “The robogriffin exploded and sent shards of Celestial bronze flying everywhere. A lot of it ended up in your back because you were right in front of the griffin’s belly when it exploded. Will had to sedate you so you didn’t wake up while he was digging the stuff out of you.”

There was a rustling sound. Sapphire strained her eyes enough to see Will leaning around one of the curtains. He looked completely worn out, but he cracked a smile when he saw Sapphire looking at him. “I thought I heard you. How are you feeling?”

“Prickly,” she replied. “You’ve met Ed, right? Oh!” She blinked and looked back to her best friend. “Gods, I didn’t even ask you if you’ve been claimed!”

“It’s OK! You have…How many stiches?” Ed looked at Will, who had entered the curtained-in area.

“Two-hundred and two,” Will replied. “And that’s not counting the staples. Speaking of which, can I take a look?”

“You’re the doctor,” Sapphire ceded. She raised an eyebrow at Ed, which must have looked strange with the right side of her face smushed into a pillow. “So? Who is it?”

“Hermes,” Ed said.

“How are the Stolls treating you?”

Ed shrugged. “I haven’t been pranked yet.” 

Sapphire smiled at him. “Aww, they’re probably planning something special.”

Ed looked worried at the idea. Sapphire resisted the urge to laugh. Then she yelped as Will put pressure on her spine.

“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. “Kayla and I pulled enough Celestial bronze out of you to make two swords, a shield, and three spearheads. You’re going to be sore for a long time.”

“Only three spearheads? Clarisse must have been disappointed,” she joked. She saw Ed roll his eyes. Then, in all seriousness, she asked, “What happened to Malcolm?” When Will didn’t say anything she added, “I know he’s alive.”

“He’s alive,” Will agreed. “He’s got second and third degree burns on sixty percent of his body and his eye is beyond saving, but he’s alive.”

“Thank the gods,” Sapphire mumbled. She didn’t know Malcolm that well, but she would have never forgiven herself if he had been killed.

“Thanks to you,” Will corrected. Then he paused and she figured that he was praying fervently for forgiveness so that he didn’t get struck by lightning. Ed decided to fill in for him.

“All that Celestial bronze that hit you would have killed Malcolm,” he said. “You saved his life.”

“What about Leo, and Jay?” Sapphire asked.

“They’re fine,” Ed assured her. “Leo just caught a piece of bronze in his arm and Jay was under my coat the whole time. They wanted to be here, but Leo had a class to teach and Will wouldn’t allow animals.”

“You wouldn’t either, if you had to clean up in here.” Will covered Sapphire’s back with cloth bandages. “I want you here for another day,” he ordered. “Then we’ll see if you can leave.”

Sapphire rolled her eyes and muttered complaints about the décor, but she agreed to stay put. Really, she couldn’t even move a finger without pulling on at least three stiches. Ed kept her company for a little while, but Sapphire told him to leave when he reveled that he was missing a sword fighting lesson that was being taught by Percy.

When you have a chance to be taught sword fighting by the son of Poseidon, you jump.

After Ed left, Sapphire let her mind wander. She started to guess what god or goddess could be the parent of Cora, but she decided she’d rather be bored than dead when she mentally described Aphrodite as vain. Eventually, lacking anything else to do, she fell asleep.

A worse idea she could not have had.

She immediately fell into a demigod dream. Demigod dreams did not count as nightmares; no matter how scary they were, so they didn’t get blocked by nightmare-banning shield that Morpheus had created around camp. 

Her first dream was of the three zombie girls, her ‘sisters’, Ursula, Emma, and Rose, who had been killed the year before. The girls were still on the wrong side of the river Styx because they weren’t completely whole. Sapphire had been dreaming about them for the entire year, but where last summer they had been telling her to join them they were now asking for her help. It was creepy and horrific and sad. There was nothing she could do to help them, so they tormented her until they got too close and she jumped into the Styx and dissolved.

She was terrified of dead bodies, even ones that belonged to innocent girls.

After that she ended up in a building, some sort of research facility, which was very much on fire. Sapphire was running towards the door and managed to get ahead of the faceless scientists that were also running ahead of the flames. When she reached the door she stopped and turned around. A wall of purple flames rose up behind her. The same flames dripped off her bare arms as she raised her black swords and smiled at the frightened mortals.

“Nobody leaves,” she hissed. She began laughing as the scientists fell to the ground and were consumed by the flames.

Sapphire woke up briefly after that dream. She gasped and then buried her face in her pillow. Was that the future? The past? Just a dream?

Note: For demigods, there is no such thing as ‘just a dream’.

She listened to the hymns that were still being sung. She understood the words, praising Hestia and Apollo, asking for their help. The soothing melody that the daughter of Apollo was using soon had Sapphire drifting back into dreamland.

She probably had other dreams, but the only one she remembered took place in the Dead Woods, the area of the forest at camp that was utterly devoid of life. She was following someone through the trees, she didn’t know who but she was sure that they were a friend. She could have been walking for days, or weeks, or only a few minutes, but eventually she arrived in a clearing with a good sized green rock in the centre of it.

“ _Come.”_

Sapphire looked around. The voice had come from everywhere at once and she wasn’t sure if it was male or female.

“Who are you?” she called.

_“Come,”_ the voice repeated.

Sapphire rolled her eyes. “Helpful.”

_“Come.”_

“I got that. Come, where? Here?”

_“Yes.”_ Okay, a different word. That was progress, right?

“Who are you?” she asked again. A breeze blew through the clearing and she got the feeling that the owner of the voice was thinking.

_“A friend.”_ Two words! Amazing! Sapphire thought for a moment. How dangerous was it to walk to an unknown location in a forest filled with monsters, presumably to meet with someone you didn’t know well?

Answer: Just an average demigod day. 

“I’ll come,” she said. _But I’m bringing my cat. And swords. And other deadly weapons._

The voice seemed to be satisfied. Sapphire sensed that she was alone. Eventually, lacking anything else to do, she created some clay warriors, took out her swords, and began fighting. After they were taken down she pulled up some gladiator _dracanae_ and repeated the process.

Being unable to move in real life was not a reason to miss training.


	4. Sapphire IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a painful one to reread. Oh gods, the pointless swearing. The _Twilight_ digs (I'm sorry! I have read _Twilight_ , I'm not the person who hated on it just because it was cool). I really hope my writing has actually gotten better than this.

The first thing Sapphire did after getting out of the infirmary was get into a fight. In her defence, she didn’t start it. Cora was the one to walk up to her and challenge her to a duel.

“Why would you want to do that?” Sapphire asked. She wouldn’t get anything useful out of it. It wasn’t like she could challenge Sapphire for the head counsellorship of the Persephone cabin. Right? “You’re not my sister, are you?”

Cora laughed haughtily and her followers—how had she managed to amass followers already?—her followers echoed her. “I’d kiss a pig before being related to you!”

“Please do,” Drew Tanaka muttered. Sapphire realized with surprise that, along with Ed, Mike of the Hecate cabin, Leila of the Nyx cabin and the Greek members of the Seven, almost the entire Aphrodite cabin was lined up behind her. She wasn’t sure what she’d done, or what Cora had done, in order to gain the support of the majority of Cabin Ten, but she wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth just yet.

Leo put a hand on Sapphire’s shoulder. He unintentionally pressed on some stitches and she flinched. “I believe Sapphire asked you a question,” he said though gritted teeth. A few people stepped back. Everyone at camp knew that Leo tended to burst into flames when he was really angry. If Cora kept insulting her, Sapphire could picture the sales of Medea SPF 50,000 going up.

Cora smiled. “I just want to prove that a child of the god of dead people isn’t anything special.”

Jay hissed at her, but a look from Sapphire stopped him from jumping at her with his claws out. She was so lucky that Nico wasn’t around. Where was Nico? Somewhere in Maryland looking for a demigod that he had gotten word of through Alecto. The Furies were all bad, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be helpful once and a while.

“So you’re going to beat her up while she’s injured?” Percy glared. “Are you trying to prove that you’re a coward?”

Annabeth elbowed her boyfriend and they had an eye-to-eye conversation, the gist of which probably was to let Sapphire take care of herself. She then caught Sapphire’s eye and nodded, telling her to take over.

“The arena,” Sapphire told Cora. “Right now. Annabeth will referee.”

Cora agreed, but then Piper reminded everyone that lunch was starting in a few minutes and wouldn’t it be better not to fight on an empty stomach? There was no charmspeak needed. Demigods don’t miss meals if they can help it.

Lunch was the most informal meal at camp. Sacrifices were still mandatory but, after his punishment had been reduced after the Titan War, Mr. D had relaxed the seating rules. Sapphire, Ed, Leo, Annabeth, Percy, Piper, Lacy, Mike, Leila and Will were sitting at the Hades table. Jay was curled up on Sapphire’s lap, having not left her side since she left the infirmary.

Will waited until everyone had started eating before he began chewing out Sapphire. “You can’t fight a duel with over two hundred sutures in your back. You won’t be able to swing a sword without popping stitches!”

Sapphire poked at her macaroni and cheese. Just that action caused a staple to pull unpleasantly. “Who said anything about swords?”

She looked briefly at the Aphrodite table, where Cora was sitting with her three minions, two girls from the Aphrodite cabin and one from the Iris cabin. Drew was sitting with her group of friends and that week’s boyfriend at the table behind Cora. She was occasionally looking up to glare at Cora’s back. She noticed Sapphire looking over and mouthed something that looked suspiciously like “Kick her butt.” 

So, Cora had done something to personally offend Drew? That was what it looked like.

Annabeth studied Sapphire’s face. “Do you want me to use formal duelling rules?” Sapphire nodded. “Including section 12b?” Sapphire nodded again. A smile slowly creeped over Annabeth’s face.

“What are you talking about?” Lacy asked. Everyone else around the table also looked confused.

“You’ll see,” Annabeth said. “Make sure you’re free after lunch, you won’t want to miss this.”

* * *

“Do you wish to continue with your challenge?” Annabeth asked Cora. Cora nodded. “I need a verbal answer.”

Cora coughed. “Yes, I do.”

Annabeth looked at Sapphire. “Do you accept her challenge?”

“I do.”

“We’re not getting married, skank.” Sapphire wasn’t sure how Cora even knew half the insults she used. Then again, the only book she’d ever seen her reading was _Twilight_.

Annabeth berated Cora for speaking out of turn. Then she addressed her next words to the large audience that had shown up. “As the challenged, Sapphire has the right to choose the weapons used for this duel.”

Sapphire stepped in without missing a beat. “I choose natural abilities, including any powers.” Her proclamation set off excited chattering in the audience. Cora’s new ‘friends’ suddenly looked worried.

“That’s not fair!” Cora exclaimed. “I don’t have any powers!”

“It’s as fair as challenging someone recovering from life-threatening injuries to a duel,” Will said. Sapphire hoped he was exaggerating about her injures being life-threatening. Nico would not be happy about her almost getting herself killed.

“Is that your final decision?” Annabeth asked.

Sapphire nodded. “Yes, it is.”

Annabeth stepped back and raised her arms. “To first blood, fight!”

Cora didn’t waste any time. She immediately started running towards Sapphire as fast as she could. She had set a record for the one-hundred metre in grade ten, and matched it in grade eleven, so it was fair to say that she was pretty fast. She was probably hoping to move fast enough that Sapphire was unable to use the shadows against her.

It was a good idea.

Pity it didn’t work.

Sapphire flicked her fingers and twisted her hand. Nico was disappointed that she was still using hand movements, but they worked just as well as his mental only approach. Once again, Cora’s own shadow moved against her. This time it pulled her backwards so that she fell on her butt and scraped the back of her legs.

Sapphire had only read half of the duelling information in the Athena cabin, and was planning to start on the other half that summer. She wasn’t entirely sure that a few scrapes would count as ‘first blood’, so she decided to make certain of her win. She drew a shadow up from the rack of weapons that was to Cora’s left. She gave an edge to the ribbon of darkness and slashed it quickly across her opponent’s upper arm.

Blood welled up, bright red against Cora’s skin. It was so bright that Sapphire was worried she had misjudged her strike and accidentally hit an artery.

Annabeth declared Sapphire the winner of the duel. Will and Kayla immediately descended on them. Kayla bandaged up Cora’s arm, declaring it a scratch despite a tearful Cora insisting otherwise. Will gave Sapphire a sip of nectar and banned her from all activities for the rest of the day.

Sometimes he took his healer duties a little too seriously.

Cora was ushered away by her allies while Sapphire’s friends scolded and applauded her.

“That was risky,” Ed told her.

“That was clever,” Annabeth countered.

“That could have gone very badly,” Mike said. Ed looked towards him gratefully.

“But she won,” Leila pointed out. She turned to Sapphire with a slight smile. Sapphire smiled back and Leila turned away, blushing. Sapphire didn’t have time to puzzle over the reason for that as Leo decided to give her a long kiss that left her head spinning.

“Seriously! Get a room, lovebirds!” Everyone looked towards the yelling and saw Clarisse and Chris standing at the edge of the arena with a group of Hermes campers behind them. 

“We have wrestling, right now,” Chris said apologetically.

“So get your butts out of here!” Clarisse exclaimed. Then she pointed to Ed. “Except for you, Hermes kid.”

Ed gulped. The rest of them cleared out of the arena and scattered around camp. Sapphire ended up spending most of the rest of the day running the cash register in the camp store. Jacob Randall had given her a crash course and then retreated to inventory the items in the back. Thankfully, there weren’t that many customers.

Sapphire also made time to write a letter home, telling her family that they’d arrived at camp with a few mishaps, but they were mostly unharmed. She told them about Ed being a son of Hermes and asked her mum to invite Ed’s mother over so that she wouldn’t be alone all the time. Then she wrote a letter just for Amber. In it she detailed the injuries that had been received and admitted that she felt responsible for Malcolm being hurt. She told her sister about the fight with Cora and how she had wanted, just for a moment, to kill her in return for all of the years of bullying. She wrote about the dreams she had had while in the infirmary. Sapphire told her sister everything. It was only fair. She mailed her letters that night.

At the campfire, Sapphire asked Leo to the fireworks, which were happening the next night. Leo accepted and that could have been the best part of the Fourth of July for Sapphire. She wasn’t sure because she also got all the sutures taken out of her back. She was still sore, but she could actually move again.

When Leo arrived at Cabin Thirteen to pick her up, Sapphire was in the washroom using a hand mirror to look at her back. She had done the same thing when the stitches and staples were in. She decided that she preferred the slightly raised scar tissue over the Bride of Frankenstein Beta look.

Harley was no longer banned from using fire starters, so the fireworks had already started by the time they got to the beach. They were late, again, but this time it was Leo’s fault. More accurately, it was the fault of the miniature dragon automatons he was making who had decided to follow him from Bunker Nine. It had taken a while to get them to go to sleep in the Hephaestus cabin. They were absolutely adorable though, which made up for the scratchy throat from singing lullabies.

“It was cute, how the dragons called you ‘daddy’.” Sapphire murmured while the words ‘THE BRITISH ARE COMING!’ exploded over Paul Revere’s head.

“You think so?” Leo asked. Then he blinked and looked at her with surprise.

“What?” Sapphire asked.

“They were speaking in creaks and clicks,” Leo said. “You shouldn’t have been able to understand them.”

Sapphire’s thoughts flashed back to the griffin attack on the Argo II, when she had heard what Festus was saying and responded to it. She thought that maybe she had imagined being able to understand when the dragon spoke, they were under a lot of pressure at the time, but now… She shook her head and leaned back against Leo’s chest. “Let’s worry about that tomorrow.” It was the beginning of the summer, there wasn’t a war looming on the horizon, and there weren’t demigods going missing. It was peaceful, and they had to enjoy it.

Leo wrapped an arm around her and together they watched the sky.

It was a beautiful night.


	5. Nico V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kyra Hale was created by Mrs-diAngelo25 in December 2012 for their _Shadows of Revolution_ series on fanfiction.net. I was given permission to use her in this story, which was written pre-Solangelo.

He had to knock on the door of Cabin Nine twice before anyone answered. The sound of running and faint shouts came from inside before the door opened.

“Duck!” Leo shouted as a flying wave of bronze burst through the door. Nico grabbed the girl standing next to him and they both dove to the ground. His ears filled with flapping as the flock passed overhead. When he could no longer hear the flapping, he stood up carefully and saw Leo leaning against the doorframe trying to catch his breath, while Sapphire was looking up from where she had hit the dirt.

“What was that?” Nico asked.

“Dragon automatons,” Leo gasped. “They’ll be back.” That was reassuring. Not. 

Sapphire stood up and brushed herself off. “Welcome back,” she said. “How’d you like Leo’s little project?”

“Fine,” Nico deadpanned. A quiet cough came from behind him and he resisted the urge to smack his forehead. “Leo, Sapphire, this is Kyra. Kyra, this is my sister Sapphire, and Leo, one of Hephaestus’ sons.”

“And Sapphire’s boyfriend,” Leo added pointedly. He and Nico looked at each other and Nico pretended to scowl.

“They always do this,” Sapphire told Kyra. “Just ignore them. You’re the demigod from Maryland, right?”

“Baltimore, Maryland,” Kyra corrected.

“Alecto wasn’t nearly specific enough,” Nico complained. “I wasted a whole day in Winchester.”

Kayla laughed. Nico wasn’t sure why she was laughing, maybe she had a cousin who lived in Winchester or something, but he didn’t care. Her laugh was bright, musical, and all he wanted to do was hear her laugh again. Fortunately, Sapphire jumped in with a question before he could do something idiotic.

“Have you been claimed yet?” Kyra nodded and started to say who her godly parent was. Sapphire quickly cut her off. “Wait! Let me guess? Please?”

Kayla hesitated. “Uh…sure.”

Sapphire squealed and Nico wondered what she had had for breakfast. Lucky Bones ™ did not have enough sugar to make a regular demigod that hyperactive. He looked at Leo, who mouthed “Later.” That was enough to make him worry.

Sapphire studied Kyra’s face. “Apollo,” she said decidedly.

Kyra looked at her, impressed. “How’d you know?”

“You have his nose,” Sapphire replied, distracted. She was looking around the cabin, either looking for something or confused as to why she was there. Her eyes suddenly rolled back into her head and she collapsed. Nico shouted in alarm. Leo caught her just before she hit the floor.

“Bunk 1-A, _por favor_ ,” Leo said. Kayla gawked as the full-sized bed rose out of the floor. Leo pushed a few buttons, probably disabling traps, and lay Sapphire down on the bed. A cat streaked up the stairs and leapt up beside Sapphire. It licked her face and meowed plaintively. “It’s just the sleeping potion, Jay. Don’t worry so much.” Jay, who must have been the ‘protector’ that their father had been talking about getting Sapphire, huffed quite obviously at Leo, curled up, and went to sleep. 

Some protector.

Nico pointed at Leo and held him in his glare. Leo gulped. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back soon.” Leo nodded.

Nico and Kayla went to the Big House so that Kayla could retrieve her bag. Then they headed to the Apollo cabin. Thankfully, Will was there rather than in the infirmary. Nico introduced him to Kayla and left them to settle things while he went back to Cabin Nine. Leo was standing in the same place he had been when they left. Nico sensed that only he, Sapphire, and Jay were in the cabin and didn’t even bother to knock. “Explain,” he ordered as soon as he entered. He stood in front of Leo with his arms crossed.

“Well, uh, Sapphire had a dream, a _demigod_ dream, last night,” Leo said. “She wouldn’t tell any of us what it was about.”

“Us?” Nico questioned.

“Me, Ed, Leila, Lacy, Will, and Mike,” Leo clarified. “I think she might have told Jay though. Anyway, she went to talk with Chiron about it and when she got back she was freaking out, like, bones coming out of the ground and plants going crazy freaking out. I think she turned some of the strawberries blue. She asked Mike for a dreamless sleep potion and he gave her one but it had a delayed reaction.”

Nico waited. “Is that all?” he asked when Leo didn’t say anything more.

Leo frowned. “She said something about a quest, but she was talking in automation, so I could be translating it wrong.” The look on his face said plainly that he hoped that he was translating incorrectly. Nico had to agree. Going on a quest was never a good thing, and he had already lost Bianca that way. He blinked as he suddenly realized something.

“Since when can Sapphire speak automation?” 

Leo grimaced. “That’s kind of a long story. You see, on the way here…”

Forty-five minutes later Nico was hobbling to the Hecate cabin on a rusty robotic leg that had appeared after he had cursed Hephaestus for the third time. 

* * *

Chiron stomped his hoof and the conversation around the campfire ended as all eyes turned to him. Even Mr. D raised his eyes up from the wine magazine he was reading.

“Heroes, I have announcements that must be made. First, however, let me introduce to you Kyra Hale, our newly claimed daughter of Apollo.” Kyra blushed at being singled out. There was polite applause, but everyone was still paying attention to Chiron, worried about what his other announcements were. A lot of the time, campfire announcements were bad news.

Chiron waited until the applause had stopped before he continued. “This morning a camper shared with me a rather prophetic dream that they had. I consulted with the gods, and they decided to allow for the quest that the dream demands.” There was an immediate uproar.

Beside Nico, Sapphire stiffened, which confirmed his notion that it was her dream that Chiron was talking about. He put a hand on his sister’s arm and squeezed it comfortingly. Sapphire turned towards him and gave a tense smile.

Chiron had to stomp his hoof several times before everyone was silent.

“What sort of quest, Chiron?” Annabeth asked, out loud so that everyone would hear the answer.

“An envoy,” he replied, “To a third faction we have be separated from for a long time.”

“Like the Romans?” Percy asked.

“Almost,” Chiron said. “This faction is _older_ than the Romans, and older than us. They have settled all over the world, not just America, and they have recently had a shift in leadership that makes this the perfect time to reunite with them.”

“But who _are_ they exactly?” Leila shouted, asking the question that everyone wanted to know the answer to.

Chiron took a deep breath. “They are called the _Per Ankh_ , the House of Life, but perhaps it is best to simply call them the Egyptians.”

There was a beat or two of silence. Then the group of Greek and Roman demigods, Roman legacies, satyrs, and one Oracle exploded with sound.

“Egyptians!”

“Where are they?”

“What the Hades?!”

“Don’t use my dad’s name in vain!” Nico inputted. He wasn’t sure if he could be heard over the other shouts.

“Where are they?!”

“Is there going to be another war?” 

“Water cannon up my nose!”

“Where ARE they?!”

“SHUT UP!” Sapphire shouted. She had stood up and her voice carried across the crowd. She didn’t usually speak up during campfires, and Nico had never heard her yell that loudly before, so a lot of jaws snapped shut. Even Chiron looked at her with surprise. 

“Brooklyn,” she said. “The nearest Egyptians are in Brooklyn.” She blushed and quickly sat down. All eyes turned back to Chiron, waiting for his confirmation.

“The nearest branch of the House of Life is in Brooklyn,” Chiron said carefully. “And that is where our envoy will be going.” Nico noticed how he said ‘envoy’ instead of ‘quest’, and he wondered if that was to make people more or less excited.

“Who’s going to go?” Leo asked.

“Sapphire Banks will be leading this quest. She will choose her companions after she has gotten her prophecy.” He nodded towards Rachel. “If our Oracle does not mind?”

Rachel stepped forwards. “It’s fine, Chiron.” She closed her eyes and Kayla caught her as she swooned. Harley grabbed her stool and Kayla helped her sit down. Green mist swirled around her and her eyes glowed the same green when she opened them. Nico did his best not to shiver. No matter how many times he saw it, Rachel going full Oracle was always creepy. 

_“You shall meet the two who are one,”_ Rachel said to Sapphire.

_“Travel to the land of the sun,_

_Across the river, and back again,_

_Three become six to avert danger for all who remain.”_

She coughed and the mist retreated. Kayla and Harley led her away from the campfire to rest. As was usual after a prophecy, everyone was silent.

“Sapphire,” Chiron said eventually, “will you choose your companions?”

Sapphire stood and looked around at the group. “Does a magical cat count as a companion?” she asked.

“No,” Mr. D said helpfully. Everyone looked to him with surprise. “Just choose someone, it’s getting late and I have better things to do.” There was the Mr. D they knew.

Sapphire looked around again and her eyes settled on a group of Aphrodite kids. “Lacy? Will you come with?”

Lacy looked around, as if making sure that Sapphire wasn’t talking to some other Lacy who happened to be a daughter of the love goddess. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” Sapphire said

“Uh…sure. Yeah, I’ll come,” Lacy said.

Sapphire smiled her thanks. Then she looked over to where most of the Hermes cabin was sitting. “Ed?”

“You can count me in,” Ed said at once. “When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Chiron proclaimed. “There is preparation that must be done first.”

With that the group disbanded. Nico saw Leo pull Sapphire aside for a quite conversation. Since no-one was looking, he didn’t have to look bothered. He got up and looked around. There was a certain daughter of Apollo he wanted to see.


	6. Sapphire VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be prepared for a cringy romantic scene. I could not write romance back when I wrote this story. I still can't write romance, but at least it's better than this.

Malcolm was getting ready to leave the infirmary when Sapphire arrived. That was a bit of a surprise to her because breakfast had literally just ended. He would probably make it back to his cabin in time for cabin inspection.

That might have been what he was trying to do, but Sapphire couldn’t figure out why he would want to get out of the infirmary just to clean.

“Morning, Malcolm,” she said quietly. The son of Athena looked up from his suitcase. He looked a lot better than he had the last time she saw him. It helped that he was wearing jeans and a camp shirt rather than one of the infirmary-issue baby blue hospital gowns. His second degree burns were all completely healed. His third degree burns were at various stages of healing, some of them were sill coated with a metallic skin-replacement cream, but they looked like they wouldn’t leave terrible scars. His right eye was covered with a pink eyepatch that was healing the damage done to the eye socket.

“Good morning, Sapphire.” Malcolm greeted her with a smile. “How are you?”

Sapphire crossed her arms and shifted from foot to foot. “I’m fine. You?”

Malcolm shrugged. “I’m alive.”

“That’s always a good thing.” She stood awkwardly while Malcolm finished re-packing.

“So, uh, what are you doing here?” Malcolm eventually asked.

“I’m going on a quest,” Sapphire admitted. “And I wanted to see how you were before we left.”

“Oh,” Malcolm said. That was a reasonable response, considering that they weren’t exactly friends.

“Umm, I guess I’ll go help Nico and Rosalind with cleaning now,” Sapphire said. “Do you want help with your suitcase?”

Malcolm shook his head. “I’ll manage.”

Sapphire nodded and turned to leave.

“Sapphire!” Malcolm said quickly. She turned back. “Thanks, for saving my life.”

Sapphire blushed and then shrugged. “What’s family for?”

* * *

After cabin inspection (Hades- 8, Persephone- 10), Sapphire decided to do something stupid. After all, the quest group wasn’t meeting Chiron until 11:00 AM, and she didn’t have anything else to do, so she had a little over two hours to kill. Well, she could have been packing, if she hadn’t already done that during the time she was supposed to be cleaning the Persephone cabin.

She didn’t actually live there much, and Rosalind didn’t make any mess anyway.

She gathered her weapons, checked what she had in shadow storage, and then looked at Jay, who was having a staring contest with the picture of Cerberus on the jar on the mantelpiece. ‘ _Are you coming, Jay?’_

_‘Coming where?’_ he asked, not breaking eye contact with the picture. Sapphire told him and he spun to look at her with his eyes nearly bugging out of his head. _‘You are insane.’_

_‘Not quite yet,’_ Sapphire insisted. Then, out loud, she asked, “Are you coming or not?” Jay huffed and picked up his tail.

_‘I’m coming, but only because your father would kill me if I let you get yourself killed.’_

Sapphire rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to get myself killed. I hope.”

_‘That’s encouraging.’_ Jay jumped into Sapphire’s waiting arms. Sapphire stepped into a shadow in the corner of the room and Jay dug his claws into her arms as they traveled. When they exited the shadows he had his eyes squeezed shut and his fur was standing on end. _‘I hate shadow travel.’_ he grumbled. He then opened his eyes and looked around. _‘Is this it?’_

_‘Nope,’_ Sapphire grinned as she knocked.

_‘You do realize that you’re knocking on a rock?’_ Jay yelped as the entrance to Bunker Nine slid open. Sapphire whipped a shadow up to catch the two mini dragon automatons that tried to fly out.

_“Back inside little ones,”_ Sapphire clicked.

The bronze dragonlings groaned. _“But mama…”_ One of them started to complain. Sapphire felt a thrill at being referred to as ‘mama’, but she stood firm.

_“No buts. Inside, both of you.”_ She released them from their bindings and the two of them flew back into Bunker Nine, though not without muttered complaints.

“Thanks,” Leo said. “How do you get them to listen to you?” Sapphire stepped into the cave and Leo closed the door to prevent any more of the dragonlings from trying to go exploring.

“It’s all in the tone,” she replied.

Leo threw his arms into the air in frustration. “What tone? It’s all creaks and clicks!”

Jay jumped out of Sapphire’s arms, allowing her to grab Leo’s wrists and get him to lower his arms. “Trust me, there are tones. Maybe you’d realize that if you talked to automatons other than Festus once and a while.” She gave him a kiss to cut the harshness of what she had said. Leo kissed her back and they both got so completely absorbed that they didn’t notice Jay miming gagging until he started to make choking noises. Leo broke off the kiss and looked down at the cat.

“Do you have a hairball, Jay?” he asked innocently.

Jay immediately stopped acting and sat up with his nose in the air. _‘I do not.’_

Sapphire giggled. “Sorry Jay. You can go inside if you want, just don’t touch anything.”

_‘I’ll wait for you, thanks.’_ Sapphire rolled her eyes.

“What did he said?” Leo asked. Sapphire told him and Leo smirked. “Stubborn little guy, isn’t he?”

“Just a little.” Sapphire looked at Leo’s face and tried to reconcile the loving prankster with the worried, overprotective demigod she had talked to the night before.

It was surprisingly easy.

Leo noticed Sapphire studying him and frowned. “Do I have something on my face?”

“No,” she said quietly, but she continued to look up at him.

He swallowed. “Sapphire?”

She broke off her gaze and gave him an apologetic hug. “I love you,” she murmured into his shoulder.

“What?” he asked.

Sapphire lifted her head and repeated audibly, “I love you.” Then she waited.

One beat.

Two beats.

Three beats. Leo gathered her into a hug. “I love you too.” He drew back and swallowed again. “Gods, if Nico, heck if _I_ wouldn’t kill me…”

Jay interrupted him with an obvious cough. _‘Are we going to go running into danger or not? We’re burning daylight.’_

Sapphire sighed. “Jay’s right. I came here to ask you something.”

Leo looked at her with a smile. “Ask away.”

Sapphire also smiled. “How would you like to go on a little adventure?”

* * *

“You’re sure this is the place?” Leo looked around warily at the dead trees. The marbled green rock in the centre of the clearing stood out among the sickly greyness. Sapphire took a few steps forwards, her hands on her swords. Jay’s ears twitched as he listened carefully.

“I’m sure,” Sapphire said. “The rock is exactly the same, and I recognize that tree over there.” She gestured across the clearing to a bent birch tree with strips of dead brown moss hanging off of it. There was movement to the side of the tree. Sapphire drew her swords and Leo hefted his hammer.

“Remind me who told you to come here?” Leo asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Sapphire grimaced. “Not a clue.”

“I hate demigod dreams.”

“Agreed.”

Jay sniffed the air. If he had been human, he would have blanched. _‘Dog!’_ he said frantically. _‘Dogdogdogdogdogdog!’_

“Wolf,” Sapphire corrected as the creature rounded the tree. She studied it for a moment. “Akio?” The blue eyed, brown furred wolf nodded, still keeping his distance. Sapphire lowered her swords. “What are you doing here?” Akio opened his mouth as if to speak, but then he closed it and started walking towards them. He stopped a few meters away from Sapphire and looked cautiously at Leo and Jay, who had changed to his giant sabre-toothed cat form.

“Do you want to show us something?” Leo asked. Akio nodded. He trotted forwards, but was halted again by Jay’s growl. Sapphire put her _wakizashi_ away and placed her free hand on Jay’s back. She sent calming thoughts to him.

“We’ll follow you,” she told the wolf.

They actually didn’t go very far, just around to the other side of the green rock. The top of the rock was a metre above Leo’s head and it was about half as wide as it was tall. It was marbled green and grey all over, except for a patch of solid green that was shaped like a print of someone’s left hand. Akio led them directly to the handprint, and then began nudging Sapphire’s hand.

“I think he wants you to put your hand on the handprint,” Leo deduced. Sapphire sighed, sheathed Swift Death, and peeled off her glove. She raised her hand and let it hover above the print on the rock. She looked at Leo.

“Apologize to Nico for me if I disintegrate.” 

“I will,” Leo said, “but try not to disintegrate.”

“I’ll try.” Sapphire pressed her hand to the rock. She immediately felt like she’d been kicked in the chest. She gasped and tried to pull her hand away, but it was stuck to the rock. Involuntarily, her plant growth power welled up and was sucked out of her palm. Her hand began glowing gold. She could soon see her bones through her skin. Her power suddenly whipped back and the rock released her, just in time for her to avoid falling into the tunnel that had opened up in the side of the rock. “Holy Hades.”

Leo caught her arm and nodded in agreement. “Should we go in?” They both looked into the dark tunnel that disappeared into the ground.

“Obviously,” Sapphire said. “How much time do we have?”

Leo pulled a digital clock out of his tool belt. “About an hour. I’ll lead?”

“Be my guest.”

Jay agreed to stay above ground and keep a lookout for danger. That was probably the least dangerous job since there was nothing living in the Dead Woods, aside from Akio that is. The wolf probably wasn’t even there or a regular basis anyway.

Akio invited himself along and fell into step behind Sapphire and Leo. The tunnel was actually wide enough to accommodate two people walking side by side, so Leo lit the areas close to them while Sapphire looked into the darkness ahead, which was almost as bright as day to her eyes. She notified Leo when the tunnel widened.

Sapphire gasped when they walked into a cave the size of a basketball court. She looked around in amazement. “Oh, Leo, you have to see this!” Leo made his handful of fire larger in an attempt to light up more of the room, but it barely made a dent in the darkness. There were a few spots of light floating around the room, but they were so small that that didn’t make a difference. Leo put out the fire.

“Hang on, there’s wiring here. Some lights too, I think. Let me see if I can get them working.” He fiddled with a panel of switches, replacing and tightening a few wires, and then he flipped the main switch on the panel. Rows of incandescent light bulbs on the upper areas of the cave’s walls lit up. A few of the bulbs had burnt out, but there was still enough light to see by. Leo’s eyes widened as he took in the room. He looked at the wall directly across from. “So there _were_ more.”

The words _Bunker Four_ were painted in white on the wall. Paintings of different plants surrounded the words and spread into a mural that took over an eight meter wide area. The entire cave was filled with tables, tanks, planters, and packed bookshelves. With all the weird things there were on the tables, Bunker Four looked like a cross between a library and a mad scientist’s lab. Sapphire was darting all over the place looking at things.

One table held an unfinished paper on the uses of water from the Styx. On another table there were three liquid filled test tubes, each with a floating light above them. In one corner there was a large fish tank that held a rose plant submerged in water. It was when Sapphire read the log that was attached to the tank that she realized what Bunker Four was for.

“Leo, look at this! Someone created a rose that can survive _submerged in salt water_. I think there were Demeter kids doing research and experiments here.”

“I found some unfinished projects,” Leo said from across the room. “They were trying to make potatoes into a type of land mine.”

Sapphire went to one of the bookshelves. “Are these trapped?” Leo went over and ran his hands over the shelf. He shook his head and Sapphire pulled the nearest book off the shelf. When she didn’t trigger a plague of fruit bats, she opened the book. It was a journal filled with research notes dating from 1865. She skimmed the first few pages. “This place was active during the Demigod Civil War.”

“Greek?” Leo questioned.

“Definitely. None of these ideas are even close to Roman.” Leo held up his forefinger in a ‘wait a minute’ motion. Sapphire waited.

“If this place was being used during 1865,” he said slowly, “then how are all the experiments still going?” Sapphire replaced the journal on the shelf and started looking for the newest notes. She eventually just walked to one of the tables and read the date on the paper that had been left there.

“I think they kept working here until August of 1945. What are the dates on the other reports?” She and Leo walked around to all the tables and noted the dates on any papers. Everything that was in progress was from August 1945.

“World War Two,” Leo said suddenly. “The war ended in August 1945. This stuff has been sitting here since the war ended.” Sapphire looked around at all the plants in the room. How could they not be dead after sixty-five years?

“They must be under some sort of preservation spell,” she deduced. “Judging by the journals it wasn’t just Demeter kids working down here.”

“We should get Lou Ellen,” Leo suggested. “Katie and Annabeth too, they’re better qualified to figure this place out. Wonder why Akio wanted us to find this.”

“A lot of stuff here could be useful,” Sapphire pointed out. “There might be stuff here that even the Athena cabin doesn’t have.” She looked around and realized that Akio had slipped back outside a while ago. Her eyes widened and she turned to Leo. “What time is it?”

Leo brought out his clock again and cursed. “Eleven forty.”

“Schist.”

They switched off the lights and hurried back through the tunnel. The entrance had closed, but Sapphire was able to reopen it by placing her hand where the handprint would be on the rock outside. This time the door opened without knocking the breath out of her.

_‘About time,’_ Jay complained when he saw them. _‘I think you’re late.’_

_‘No kidding,’_ Sapphire thought back. The door closed behind them and they hurried back to camp. As they rushed through the forest Sapphire blatantly hoped that Chiron wouldn’t be _too_ mad at her.


	7. Sapphire VII

It was one thirty by the time they were ready to leave. They had actually managed to fit in lunch during their planning session, but they were then delayed by Lacy not knowing at all what to pack. Eventually Chiron told her to only bring what she could run while carrying, which whittled the previous five extra outfits down to two. The fifteen year old daughter of Aphrodite actually didn’t seem to mind too much, she was more worried about not having enough Celestial Bronze bullets to last the entire quest. She was still stressing about it when they gathered on Half-blood Hill.

“Lacy,” Ed finally said, interrupting her fretting. “You have a few hundred bullets, your chain whip, and a knife. I think you’ll be fine.” Lacy opened her mouth to protest and he added, “Besides that, Sapphire has about a dozen extra weapons in her shadow.”

Lacy blushed. “I know, it’s just…This is my first quest. I don’t want to be a dead weight.” Sapphire clapped her on the shoulder.

“Lacy, you know almost everyone at Brooklyn House. You’re not a dead weight, you’re essential. The outcome of this entire quest could rest on you!” She grinned to let her friend know she was joking about the last bit.

“I take it back. I’m fine with being a dead weight,” Lacy said flatly. She and Sapphire both laughed, while Ed shook his head at their antics.

“Are we ready to go?” he asked after they had stopped laughing. “We’re not waiting for anyone?”

“You know Jay isn’t allowed to come,” Sapphire said innocently.

Ed rolled his eyes upwards, as he had done many times before. “You know what I mean.” She did, she just enjoyed bugging him sometimes.

“We’ve all said goodbye.” She looked towards Lacy. “Right?” Lacy nodded and Sapphire turned back to Ed. “Right.”

“So, let’s go.” Ed shouldered his backpack and buckled the strap that reached across his chest. Sapphire did the same. Lacy looked over her shoulder at Camp before repeating their actions with her fancy, surprisingly small, pink mountaineering backpack. Even though she had a hard time figuring out what to bring, Lacy was a very efficient packer.

They all checked the placement of their weapons one last time. Ed had the two knives that Sapphire had given him attached to his belt with one in its keychain form. Lacy’s gun was strapped to her leg in a special sheath that rendered the whole thing completely invisible. Her chain whip was wrapped around her left wrist as a bracelet. Sapphire’s _katana_ was in ring mode and her _wakizashi_ was wherever it went when Swift Death wasn’t out. She wasn’t even counting all the other knives and things that she and Lacy were carrying.

For one quest group they sure had a lot of weapons.

Sapphire held out a hand to each of her companions, who hesitantly took them.

“Is shadow travelling as bad as they say?” Lacy asked.

Sapphire shrugged. “Eh, it depends on who you ask. Just hold on, and close your eyes if you think you’ll throw up.” Ed muttered something about how she was just so understanding and Sapphire smiled at him.

“On three?” Lacy suggested nervously.

“Sure. One… two… three.” Peleus huffed in his sleep as Sapphire ran into the shadow of Thalia’s Tree, pulling Ed and Lacy after her. She thought she heard Ed yelp as they entered the shadows, but she couldn’t be sure.

Extremely loud rushing noises and the occasional screams of the dammed made it hard to hear a single specific voice. 

When they landed at the base of the Empire State Building, which was the only place in America that Sapphire had actually been to aside from the demigod camps, Ed let go of her hand, stumbled away, and braced both hands against the building. This actually drew more attention from mortals than their initial arrival, which just goes to show how well the Mist works. 

“Never again,” he said when he was able to stand up on his own. He might not have much of a choice in that, but he made his point. Sapphire made note, Ed Newton was not a fan of shadow travel.

“So, should we catch a taxi?” Lacy asked. “How much do you think it will cost to get them to drive around Brooklyn until we see something?”

Sapphire was about to answer when Ed blinked and perked up like a meerkat sentry catching sight of danger. “I know where we have to go,” he said with surprise. “Or, which way we have to go anyway.” He looked at Sapphire and they conversed silently, which started to annoy Lacy.

_You’re certain of the direction?_

_Completely._

_But you’re not sure where?_

_Not a clue._

_What’s the worst that could happen?_

_We run into monsters and die._

_That could happen anyway. Let’s go._

“Are you done yet?” Lacy asked.

Sapphire nodded. “If you’re okay with it, Ed will lead the way.”

Lacy shrugged. “Sure. It’s not like we have a time limit.” She gestured with her arm and said to Ed, “Lead the way.”

Following Ed was like following a hound that had caught a scent, if not difficult, than at least exhausting. He had been almost running through the crowded sidewalks before Lacy begged him to slow down. He moved erratically, dodging to the left one time and right the next, and sometimes just jumping over obstacles. Sapphire and Lacy eventually managed to catch up with him. Sapphire grabbed hold of his shirt collar and asked him to please walk like a normal person.

He probably regretted keeping pace with them, because Sapphire and Lacy started chatting excessively about just about everything.

“So, what do you think about Cora?” Sapphire asked. They had been so busy the past few days that their group of girl friends hadn’t once gotten a chance to get together and just talk. It was a certainty that Cora would have been one of their topics.

Lacy made a face. “She’s worse than my sisters. Her mother is supposed to be the goddess of fame, but you could swear she’s the goddess of gossip.” Thunder didn’t rumble, probably because it was true and Pheme didn’t care who said it. If she was a mortal, she would be one of those YouTubers who get likes just by filming themselves walking down the street. “She managed to start three rumours by the end of the day yesterday, and one by the time we left today.”

Cora was exactly the same at school, though it was to a lesser degree because there really wasn’t that much ammunition. You could only say that Kristie Ross had cheated on her boyfriend with Ryan Collins and was pregnant with his baby so many times. Camp Half-Blood on the other hand, had lots of ammunition ready and waiting. 

Sapphire grimaced. “Dare I ask what the rumours are about?”

Lacy thought for a moment. “There was one about one of the dryads being pregnant…”

“Why does she always use that?”

“… Nico kissing the new Apollo girl after the campfire last night…”

“That might have actually happened. He _was_ blushing a lot when I asked him why he was late.”

“…the Stolls planning to fill Cabin 6 with spiders….” They were so dead if they actually managed that. “…and one about you cheating on Leo with some mortal at your school.” Lacy finished. Her face froze and she looked at Sapphire, who had one eyebrow raised. “No-one believes that last one,” she added quickly.

“They’d better not,” Sapphire said calmly. She dodged a man hawking novelty lighters and bunches of flowers.

Their conversation turned to their families. Lacy revealed that her father was a mathematician who lived in Brooklyn Heights. She lived with him during the school year. Sapphire asked how he’d managed to catch Aphrodite’s attention and Lacy replied with one word, phi.

“Phi?” Ed asked suddenly. “Like, 1.618—”

“—03398857.” Lacy continued. “The golden ratio. He was using it to calculate beauty.” That made a whole lot more sense. Sapphire wondered if he’d calculated Aphrodite’s beauty.

When he actually took part in the conversation, Ed talked about his mother and his little brother. His mother was Chinese with family in Guangdong Province. Her name was Sue, and she was like an aunt to Sapphire, Amber, and Richie, who all moved freely between the two houses. Davey was Richie’s age, twelve, and the two of them were practically brothers.

They had been walking for about an hour when they arrived. They had been delayed twice. First when they had been dive-bombed by a harpy who had been attracted by the light shining off Ed’s knife. She had flown away when gifted with a sparkly, bedazzled hairclip that Lacy had been wearing. They had then been swarmed by a flock of Stymphalian birds, which had flown away screaming when Sapphire drew a Stygian iron dagger.

“We’re here,” Ed announced. They stopped. They were standing at a fork on a walking path in Central Park. One path skirted up against a windowed building, and the other afforded a perfect view of a stone structure. Sapphire looked around a tree and realized that the stone was an obelisk.

“I’m an idiot,” she announced. She pointed at the building. “That’s the Met, isn’t it?” she asked Lacy, who nodded. Then Sapphire pointed to the obelisk. “And that’s the New York Cleopatra’s Needle. It’s paired with the one in London—”

“—which is where Sadie Kane is from.” Ed finished. “And magicians can use obelisks to travel—”

“— which is why you led us here!”

Lacy looked back and forth between Sapphire and Ed. “Do you have to act like the Stolls?” she asked plaintively.

Ed and Sapphire blushed. “Sorry,” they chimed.

Lacy rolled her eyes. “You’re not even trying,” she muttered. Then she looked at Cleopatra’s Needle. “So, do we just wait or—” She prematurely assassinated her sentence when a whirlwind of sand appeared at the top of the obelisk and spat out two people and a flock of flying monsters.

They were just swamped with winged monsters today.

“Sadie?” Lacy exclaimed when she caught sight of the first person. Sadie Kane was wielding her staff and wand, and she was sporting blue highlights and her patented combat boots.

“Lacy?” she said with confusion. “What are you—?” One of the monsters, demons, Sapphire corrected herself, threw back its hawk head and let out a screech before diving towards Sadie with its claws outstretched. The young man who had come through the portal with her raised his wand and fired off a blast of grey energy that turned the demon to dust. He was dressed all in black and had a golden amulet hanging around his neck. Sapphire guessed that he was Walt Stone/Anubis.

“Talk later, fight now,” he told Sadie. The two magicians redid their wands and staffs to retaliate as the other demons began to attack. Lacy, Sapphire and Ed looked at each other. Then they did the only sensible thing that they could do.

They shouted and joined the fray.


	8. Yet Another Unexpected Journey

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I don’t know how it happens, but every time I go to London I almost die. First there was that time with the vulture goddess and the baboon god possessing my gran and gramps (long story), then the weekend that I spent running away from a pillar of fire (longer story), and also that other time when I was chased all the way to Buckingham Place by an army of cheese shabti (don’t even ask). This time though, I was bringing along a god, who also happened to be my boyfriend, so I was pretty sure that we could handle anything that could happen without almost getting killed.

I was wrong.

We had just stepped out of my grandparent’s house and were walking down the street, hand in hand. On Gran’s insistence, I had brought Walt/Anubis to come meet them. That was mostly my fault as I hadn’t gotten around to telling Gran and Gramps that I was dating someone until this Christmas (oops). I think Gran was trying to do Mum’s job, you know, making sure she approved of my boyfriend. I had decided not to tell her that Mum had already given me her approval years ago.

Telling someone that you’ve talked with their dead child never goes well, just ask Anubis.

“So, your grandfather doesn’t hate us too much,” Anubis said. The poor boy was actually worried about that, by the way. Reminding him that he was a god did nothing to help.

“I like your grandmother,” Walt inputted. Yes, I did know it was Walt, not Anubis. It’s been almost three years since we started dating and I could tell the two of them apart from the beginning, no Duat-vision required.

“That’s because she didn’t serve biscuits,” I joked. I know I’ve said it many times before, but it can’t hurt to repeat that Gran’s biscuits are horrible. We could have fed them to a certain overgrown rat snake and sent him running back to his prison.

Darn it. Why do I come up with great ideas three years too late?

Walt smiled and tilted his head to kiss my cheek. An older couple walking past us looked at him and smiled to each other in a ‘isn’t that sweet’ way.

“I though your grandfather was going to kill us when Walt told him how old we are,” Anubis said after the couple was out of earshot.

“At least I said our age now, not your age before,” Walt argued. “We’d have given him a heart attack.” They probably would have. There’s a big difference between twenty and three thousand and twenty.

“Boys, please stop fighting before the mortals decide we’re more insane than we look.” Wearing what basically amounts to cotton pajamas (me) and carrying around a plastic bag full of mummy wrappings (Walt) does not inspire confidence in one’s sanity. Adding having an argument with yourself to that list does not make it any better.

Walt and Anubis wisely decided to stop talking out loud to each other, though I was sure they were still communicating mentally.

That was probably why we got jumped so easily.

Talons grabbed my shoulders and I was lifted high into the air before I could blink. Anubis shouted and threw his bag at the group of green skinned demons that had jumped out of the bushes. The cloth immediately began to move and the three demons were soon wrapped up like, well, mummies. 

Walt took out his wand and pointed it at the nearest demon. “Who sent you?” he asked, scarily calm. I almost felt sorry for the demon.

While Walt and Anubis were trying to get answers out of the three greenies, I was having an air battle with Face of Horror 2.0.

Remember Set’s lovely lieutenant, the one who hosted Apophis? Well, he was back and looking a lot uglier than the last time I’d seen him, which meant that, for a demon, he looked better. After he ever so rudely lifted me into the air, I did the only thing it made sense to do. I turned into a kite. (If you don’t know by now that I’m talking about the bird, then you have a listening problem.) 

Face of Horror squawked as my sudden change in weight pulled him off balance. It only took me a second to slip out of his talons, fly higher, and dive down with my talons extended towards the mess of flesh that was his face. He put his hands up, but I still managed to get a few good scratches in. Then I did something I’d never tried before. I changed back into a human in midair and pulled my staff out of the Duat. Thankfully, I landed on a rooftop and managed to stop rolling so that I didn’t go splat on the sidewalk below. I stood and brandished my staff.

“Hey! Face of Horror! Over here you bat-winged mole rat!” I shouted. Face of Horror wiped blood out of his eyes and pointed at me.

“Kane! I’ll make you pay!” He dove towards me with all his claws and talons extended.

That was the last thing he would be doing for a long time.

A stream of fire engulfed the demon and soon all that was left of him was a charred skeleton, which broke into ashes as soon as it hit the ground. Fire isn’t exactly my specialty, but it worked well enough. I turned back into a kite and glided down to land beside Walt/Anubis, who had dispatched the three asparagus demons.

“Did you get anything out of them?” I asked once I had made myself human again. Walt shook his head.

“They all disintegrated as soon as one of them started talking,” he said, kicking one of the piles of sand at his feet.

“Whoever sent them doesn’t want us to know who they are,” Anubis added.

“So, just another Monday morning,” I muttered. “If they really want to kill us, they’ll try again. If not, we can just forget about it.”

Walt and Anubis both looked worried, but then they nodded. “You have a point.” Really, it was just easier not to dwell on random attacks. We kicked the former demons off the sidewalk and continued walking. Apparently though, the attack wasn’t so random. We made it a few meters before Walt looked back and saw something that made his eyes widen. “Sadie, look.” I turned and saw what looked suspiciously like a flock of demons flying towards us.

“Oh dear,” I said, watching the winged Swiss Army Knife attachment demons get closer. “Shall we run for our lives?”

“That would be a good idea.”

We turned and ran. A few mortals shouted as we rushed past them but, as we didn’t knock anyone over, no-one tried to stop us. I’m embarrassed to say that we sprinted blindly for a few moments before deciding on a destination. “Cleopatra’s Needle,” I gasped. “Portal back to New York and get help.”

“With the demons?” Anubis asked. I nodded. From what I’d seen of the flock, even though Walt/Anubis was a god we’d need at least three more magicians to have a hope of fighting the demons off. We’d end up dead if we took them on ourselves, but we couldn’t just run to Brooklyn House and leave the demons to terrorize morals. Hopefully someone from Brooklyn House would come to investigate the ruckus we were going to create and be able to help us fight.

We arrived at the obelisk leagues ahead of the demons. I began opening a portal to BAG, the closest spot to Brooklyn House that had a usable artifact, while Walt/Anubis kept a lookout for the flock.

“Hurry,” they said. “Don’t send us to Timbuktu, but hurry.”

I continued chanting and soon the portal snapped open at the top of the obelisk. It gave off a strange golden glow that I couldn’t remember seeing before, but there was nothing about it that screamed ‘evil’, which was a good thing.

Anubis summoned more mummy wrappings that lifted us up until we were level with the portal. “Here they come,” Walt said, pointing. The flock of assorted demons was rushing towards us, apparently having finally caught up. Walt/Anubis judged the distance between us and the demons. “Through the portal on three,” they said. “One…two…three!”

We jumped into the swirling sand, and the demons dove in after us. We exited the portal about twenty meters above the ground, which was all it took for me to realize that we were not in Brooklyn. We landed hard on pavement and I spat out sand grumpily. I heard the demons flying overhead. I also heard someone shout my name. When I looked up, I saw the last person I’d expected to see. “Lacy?” My mortal friend, who was supposed to be at a summer camp, was standing on the path near a building that I recognized, the MET in Central Park, with two other mortals, a girl and a boy, who I did not recognize. “What are you—?” I was cut off by one of the demons screeching impatiently and diving in my direction. Walt/Anubis quickly blasted it to dust.

“Talk later, fight now,” they said sensibly. The demons took that as their cue to start attacking in earnest. Walt/Anubis continued to fire off disintegrating blasts, while I turned to the mortals to tell them to run. To my surprise, Lacy and the boy, who was wearing a ridiculous trench coat, had drawn weapons and were preparing to fight.

Lacy was wielding some sort of handgun that she was firing into to mass of demons and a type of metal whip with a spike and strips of fabric on the end that she was using to strangle and impale demons. The boy was standing in front of the other girl with two large knives. One of them was somehow a harpoon that he launched into the flock, impaling demons and, if they didn’t disintegrate from that, dragging them closer so that he could finish them off with his second knife. The girl, who I’d have called ‘goth’ if I bothered to waste my time classifying people during a fight, was standing with her arms straight up in the air as if she was holding up the black dome that had formed, trapping all the demons in with us. She turned to look at me and I blinked with surprise when I saw the ugly scar on the right side of her face.

“Stop staring, start fighting, Sadie Kane!” she shouted at me. I didn’t have time to get over the shock of some random stranger knowing my name, though, if you think about it, I should be used to it by now, because a fork-headed, dragonfly-winged orange demon decided to try to see what I ate for lunch. It dove towards my stomach fork-first and I frantically tried to think of a spell to get rid of it before I became Sadie-sausage.

“ _Ha-wi!”_ The hieroglyphs for ‘strike’ blazed gold in front of the demon and sent it tumbling backwards into a tree where it hung, dazed, until Lacy shot it and it crumbled into sand. I didn’t know what type of bullets she was using, but they worked embarrassingly well. Embarrassing for Walt/Anubis and I anyway; why couldn’t we have guns that worked against denizens of the otherworlds?

There was quite a lot of sand falling to the ground as Walt/Anubis, the two definitely-not-regular-morals, and I utterly destroyed the flock of raging demons. The black dome didn’t fall until the last demon had been turned to ashes by Walt/Anubis. While the former screwdriver-headed demon floated to the ground, the dome fell apart into shadows that returned to their tree or building. The goth girl then stumbled forwards, looking like she was going to either faint or be sick. The trench coat boy caught her arm to stop her from falling flat on her face.

“Never tried to hold together something that big.” I heard her gasp to Lacy and the boy as Walt/Anubis and I walked over to the group of three. “Give me a minute.”

“Hello,” I said once it looked like the goth girl wasn’t going to do a face plant. “Your fighting was brilliant. What on earth are you?”

The goth girl laughed. “Sadie Kane, getting right to the point.” She giggled. “Why not ask your boyfriend? I’ll bet he knows.”

Instead of looking at Walt/Anubis, who I already knew was looking between the three others with a questioning look on their face, I looked at Lacy, who was wrapping her whip around her wrist, where it shrank into the bracelet she wore to school every day. “Lacy, care to explain?”

She looked at her two companions and then back at me. “Let’s find somewhere to talk,” she suggested. “This might take a while.”


	9. We Almost Disintegrate the Children of Gods

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It took us about twenty minutes to find a bench to sit on that was far enough away from the destruction our battle with the flying demons had caused. Walt/Anubis and the goth girl both wanted to get further away, but when walking for five minutes caused the goth girl to nearly pass out, Lacy and the boy insisted that we stop.

“Do you want some ambrosia?” the boy asked the goth girl, preparing to reach into his bag. She shook her head and said something in a different language that I thought I had heard before, but couldn’t quite place. The boy nodded.

I held up a hand. “OK, what language was that? Who are you?”

The boy and the girl looked at each other. “Greek,” the boy said finally. “Of the ancient variety. I’m Ed Newton, this is Sapphire Banks, and you already know Lacy.” Lacy gave a little wave.

“Better question,” Walt said. “What are you?”

“We’re demigods,” Sapphire replied quietly. “Live, fight, die; hope the end isn’t too painful.” She giggled. “That should be our motto, don’t you think?” She giggled again, and I briefly wondered about her sanity. Neither I nor Walt had ever heard of demigods.

Anubis frowned. “You’re the children of gods. The Greek gods, I’m guessing?” Leave it to the only god present to understand what Sapphire was talking about. Sapphire, Ed, and Lacy nodded. “I didn’t know you still existed.”

“That’s not insulting at all,” Sapphire muttered.

“Remember all those earthquakes and landslides three years ago?” Lacy asked. “And the storm system that was crossing the country the year before that? That was us.”

“That…actually makes a lot of sense,” Anubis acknowledged.

“So, the Greek gods are real?” I asked. “Zeus, Poseidon and all those blokes?” Don’t be surprised, sometimes I actually do listen when my encyclopedia of a brother gives a boring lecture.

Thunder rumbled and the three demigods flinched. “And their Roman counterparts.” Ed confirmed. “Could you please not use their names? Some of them are a bit touchy and we don’t want to draw attention.” Thunder rumbled again and lightning flashed in the distance. “Sorry!” Ed squeaked. I was suddenly glad that none of our gods had the ability to strike us with lightning whenever we said something they didn’t like.

“’Anyway,” Lacy said quickly. “Our gods have stuck around since ancient times, moving with Western Civilization. Right now, they’re in America.”

“Demigods are the children of gods and mortals,” Sapphire added. “Half-and-half. Like magicians, we tend to cause gas explosions and natural disasters.” She grinned suddenly. “My cousin blew up Mount Saint Helens once!” Okay, she was officially crazy.

I realized something. “Wait, how do you know about magicians?”

Ed looked at me like the answer was obvious and I had just asked a very stupid question. “You and your brother made recordings, remember? The guy who transcribed them, as fiction novels, just to let you know, is our Chief Scribe.”

So, Carter and I had been sending information about the modern Egyptian end of the world to a Greek demigod? That was… odd. And slightly troubling. “So, demigods have known about magicians and the nomes since our first recording?”

Ed shook his head. “We just learned about you guys last night, officially. Sapphire and I have read your books, and there might be some copies in Cabin Six, but most demigods are dyslexic, so we tend to avoid reading English.”

I had no clue what Cabin Six was, but I did know about ‘our’ books. Some of our trainees had actually found us because of those books. We should probably send a thank you note to the guy who wrote them. I added that to the list of things that should be done, but probably won’t.

“Who are your parents?” Walt asked. Then he seemed to remember the storm that had gathered on the horizon the last time the names of their gods had been spoken. “Or can you not say?”

Ed and Sapphire looked at each other. Lacy sighed and muttered something about being like Ky Ron and Annie Beth. Sapphire’s head suddenly snapped sideways and she looked over at a bushy tree that was standing near to a sad-looking sundial near the path. Without a word she got up and headed towards the tree. The rest of us just watched her go.

“What’s that about?” Anubis asked.

Ed shrugged and Lacy giggled. “Absolutely nothing,” she replied, which probably meant she knew exactly why Sapphire had left.

“She’ll be fine,” Ed muttered to himself. Then he turned around and went back to our conversation as if nothing had happened. “I’m a son of Hermes, the god of travelers.”

“The one that Thoth doesn’t like,” I recalled. “Something about his sacred city.” Ed nodded.

“Daughter of Aphrodite,” Lacy said. She made a face. “So is Drew. My other siblings are much nicer though. Most of them.” I blinked. Lacy was related to Drew, the rhymes-with-witch queen of the Plastic Bags? Well, you don’t get to choose your family.

“Aphrodite is the goddess of…music?” I guessed, remembering how Lacy played some sort of harp for school. Thunder rumbled and all four of us flinched. “I guess not.”

“Love and beauty,” Lacy corrected. “Apollo is the god of music, poetry, and a whole lot of other things.”

“Dude has a really long CV,” Ed agreed. I got ready to flinch again, but there wasn’t any thunder. I guess Apollo didn’t mind being referred to as ‘dude’.

“What about Sapphire?” I asked. “Who’s her parent?”

“Hades,” Sapphire said from right behind me. I sat straight up in surprise. I hadn’t even noticed that she’d gotten back. “The king of the Underworld. Our Underworld anyway.”

Ed looked up at her and then jerked his head towards the tree. “What was that about?”

Sapphire waved a hand. “Just Apollo helping me to stop making a fool of myself.”

“Did he want anything in return?” Lacy asked, obviously worried. I didn’t blame her, if their gods were anything like ours, then they liked handing out deadly missions in return for giving help.

“He wanted me to give Anubis a message.” She turned to Walt/Anubis. “Apollo says hi, and he wants me to tell you that wolves are better than jackals.”

Anubis grimaced. “Jackals are better than wolves,” he said woodenly. I had the feeling that this was an argument that he and Apollo had had many times before. He looked around at the rest of us. “Right?”

“Definitely,” I said.

The three demigods shifted their weight uncomfortably. “No comment,” Sapphire replied. Lacy and Ed nodded in agreement. “Besides, we’re not really here to debate the prowess of mammals. We’re supposed to be a diplomatic envoy, to help join our people thanks to your changes in leadership and our Greeks and Romans are no longer killing each other.”

“Oh,” I said. “Um…Welcome?”

Ed gave a small smile. “Thanks. I actually didn’t think we’d make it through a conversation without trying to kill each other.”

Sapphire rolled her eyes. “Oh ye of little faith.”

A bird settled on a nearby tree. Its feathers flashed and Ed immediately brought out his harpoon knife and fired it at the bird. The bird squawked as it crumbled into golden dust. Lacy and Ed stood.

“We’ve been here for too long,” Ed announced. “We’re attracting monsters.” 

“Back to camp?” Lacy asked.

Walt/Anubis shook their head. “Brooklyn House,” they said. “It keeps monsters out, and you three should meet Carter when he gets back.”

“Back from where?” Sapphire asked. Then she shook her head. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

I didn’t want to risk a portal after the last one had gone so wonky, so we left Central Park and hailed a cab. The only problem with that plan was that not all of us would fit. Sapphire offered to do something called ‘shadow-traveling’ to take herself to Brooklyn House, but Ed and Lacy shot down that idea vigorously. Eventually, after we annoyed the cab driver to no end, Ed pulled a gold coin out of his bag and asked for the address. I told him and he said that they’d catch their own cab. I was confused as I didn’t know of any cab company that took gold coins the size of coasters. Anubis seemed to know what Ed was talking about and got into the cab, telling the demigods that we’d meet them there.

One thankfully uneventful cab ride later, Walt/Anubis and I arrived at Brooklyn House to see Lacy and Sapphire both looking green while Ed handed another gold coin to the driver of a grey cab.

“How did you get here so fast?” I asked.

“Chariot of Damnation,” Sapphire said queasily. “They don’t know how to slow down, even when they have their eye.” There was probably a long story behind that, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know what it was.

Ed looked up, somehow the cab had disappeared, and squinted up at Brooklyn House. “Do either of you see anything?” he asked Lacy and Sapphire.

“There’s sort of a fuzzy outline,” Lacy said, gesturing at the mansion.

“I can see some pillars,” Sapphire told him. “And a bit of the roof.”

“I just see the door,” Ed admitted. He looked at Walt/Anubis and me. “You’ll have to lead us.”

By the time we reached the door of the mansion all three demigods were able to see it clearly. I opened the door and Walt/Anubis and I walked in. Sapphire, Lacy and Ed followed. I turned around quickly when I heard Sapphire scream and was just in time to see her stumble backwards and curl up on the pavement. Lacy and Ed rushed to her side.

“What happened?” Lacy asked. Ed didn’t even bother asking questions, he dug through his bag and pulled out a baggie of lemon squares. He broke a piece of one of them and fed it to Sapphire. I didn’t think that a pastry would do anything to help, but Sapphire was soon able to sit up and her muscles weren’t tensed anymore.

“Felt like I was being broken down into DNA strands,” she muttered. “Ow.”

I’m pretty sure that the ‘ow’ was an understatement.

Lacy helped Sapphire to stand up and they walked back towards the door. This time they were all careful not to touch the threshold.

“We’re sorry,” Walt/Anubis said. “We didn’t realize that the spells would keep you out.”

“Keep us out?” Sapphire repeated. “They almost disintegrated me!”

“We are half god,” Ed reminded her. “And your father is one of the Big Three.”

“Point taken,” Sapphire muttered. She looked at me. “I guess you’ll have to let us in.”

At first I wasn’t sure how to do that, then I remembered how Uncle Amos gave Bast permission to enter when we’d first come to Brooklyn House, so, I tried that. I felt absolutely ridiculous placing my hand on each demigod’s head and solemnly giving them permission to enter, but when Sapphire placed her foot over the threshold and didn’t collapse in pain I knew that it had worked.

Lacy, Sapphire, and Ed entered the mansion and their mouths immediately dropped open. “Oh my gods,” Lacy said.

I grinned. “Welcome to Brooklyn House.”


	10. Sapphire X

The first thought that Sapphire had upon entering was that Annabeth would love Brooklyn House. Her second thought was ‘oh my gods that flying Thermos is going to hit me’. Instinctively, she threw out her hand and a shadow snapped up, hitting the Thermos and smashing it into the stone floor. 

It wasn’t her greatest idea. The room immediately started spinning and she squeezed her eyes shut. Note: Using Underworld powers right after nearly being reduced to your DNA is not good for your health.

By the time she was able to open her eyes without feeling like the world was turning into an apocalyptic merry-go-round, the three magicians standing in front of her had regained their power of speech.

“What was that?” exclaimed a dark-haired guy with an Irish accent. He was holding his staff like a baseball bat and had apparently been trying to knock the Thermos out of the air. The other boy ran towards the downed Thermos and started stamping on it, crushing it to pieces. Penguins also attempted to help destroy the Thermos, though they weren’t as successful. 

“That was awesome!” the boy shouted as he jumped up and down, ice leaking from his feet to freeze and brittle-ify the mangled metal and plastic.

“That was stupid,” Ed muttered. “No offence.”

“I’ve been hit with enough flying pieces of metal this summer,” Sapphire replied. “Cut me some slack.”

The blond girl who was standing behind the Irish guy looked at Sadie and Walt. “Why did you bring mortals here?” she asked, gesturing towards Lacy.

“Demigods, Jaz,” Lacy corrected.

Sapphire snapped her fingers suddenly. “Jaz, Felix, and Sean from Dublin. _ad iudicium_!” she said. Her completely random comment worked just as she had intended, refocusing the attention of all seven people in the room and uniting them in puzzling through her randomness.

“‘To judgment’?” Lacy asked. Ed looked at the three magicians who weren’t Sadie or Walt, blinked once, and then nodded to himself.

“How do you know our names?” the Irish guy, Sean, asked.

Sapphire shrugged. “I read.”

“A lot,” Ed added. Jaz gave a small smile and Sean slowly lowered his staff. Felix stopped jumping on the Thermos’ remains.

“Cleo is going to like you,” Jaz said to Sapphire.

“Gods I hope so,” Sapphire replied seriously. Cleo had possibly the most deadly fighting style out of everyone at Brooklyn House, not including Anubis. Sapphire had no desire to become a bath mat with intestinal problems. 

* * *

Sean gave them a tour of Brooklyn House while Sadie and the others gathered the rest of the Nome together. The mansion was huge, and Sapphire knew that she’d manage to get herself lost without a map of the place. Ed, of course, seemed to already know the entire floor plan of the mansion.

Children of Hermes, the only demigods who are always good with directions (unless they are the Stoll brothers).

While Sapphire was trying to figure out which way was north (yes, she had gotten that turned around), Lacy was trying to get Sean to tell them everything about himself. Thankfully she didn’t have charmspeak, because if she did then poor Sean would have been talking till kingdom come. All she managed to get him to say was that his last name was Elegy, he was fifteen, a water elementalist, and following the path of Tefnut, the goddess of rain.

“And here’s the dining room,” Sean narrated. “Over there you’ll see Philip of Macedonia, our albino crocodile. Don’t mention the albino part to him, he’s sensitive about it.” Philip blinked his big pink eyes up at them and splashed a bit in his pool. He was a lot bigger than the crocodiles Sapphire had seen at the Toronto Zoo, and it seemed that he could easily swallow all three demigods in one gulp.

“He does only eat bacon and hapless waterfowl, right?” Sapphire asked Sean, hoping for confirmation. She did not expect him to grimace. “What?”

“He ate a magician that was trying to break in here a few weeks ago,” he said. “It was…disgusting, really messy.” Lacy seemed to be imagining exactly what that would look like and her face slowly began turning green. Normally blood-and-guts talk didn’t get to veteran demigods, demigods who had fought in either of the recent wars, so Lacy was probably only nauseous as an aftereffect of their ride in the Grey Sisters’ Taxi. Still, changing the subject was probably a good idea. Fortunately Sapphire didn’t have to make a fool of herself to introduce a new topic, because at that moment the magicians of Brooklyn House started filing into the room. One of them, a little girl who was probably about ten, ran straight up to Sean and the demigods.

“Are you the half-gods?” she asked excitedly. When Sapphire, Ed and Lacy nodded, the girl let out a squeal that rivalled that of a dying empousa. “It’s so great to meet you! I’ve never met a half-god before!” She jumped up and down excitedly, her pigtails quickly becoming a safety hazard.

“Shelby, calm down,” Sadie ordered. “Remember that time when you turned Carter into a pig?”

“Oh,” Shelby immediately stopped jumping. “Right. Sorry.”

“Agh,” said the one baboon in the room, sitting down at the long dining table. The magicians followed his lead and the three demigods quickly claimed three seats facing towards Philip’s pool. All of the magicians were looking towards the demigods with interest, which made Ed squirm uncomfortably.

“Maybe we should start with introductions?” Lacy suggested to the almost silent room. “I’m Lacy Vogels, daughter of Aphrodite, goddess of love”

“Ed Newton,” Ed said quickly. “Son of Hermes, our god of travellers.”

“Sapphire Banks, daughter of Hades, lord of the dead.” Thunder rumbled and Sapphire flinched. Apparently she was only going to get away with just naming one of her parents once that day. “Hades and his wife Persephone, but I’m still a demigod. Don’t ask how.” 

Walt cleared his throat. “OK. I’m Walt Stone, the Eye of Anubis and the follower of his path.”

“Are we really all going to introduce ourselves like that?” Sadie asked. Lacy turned and presumably gave her a _look_ that Sapphire didn’t see because the daughter of Aphrodite was turned away from her. Sadie coughed. “All right. I’m Sadie Kane, former Eye of Isis and speaker of the Divine Words.”

From across the table Felix raised his hand. “Me next! I’m Felix Shaw, ice elementalist, follower of the path of the ice god, once I find out who they are.”

“Jaz Anderson, healer, follower of the path of Sekhmet.” 

“Cleo Gomes, I follow the path of Thoth, our god of knowledge.” 

“I’m Julian St. Cross. I’m a combat magician and a follower of the path of Horus.”

“Alyssa Morgan. Earth elemantalist and follower of the path of our earth god, Geb.”

Here Sapphire had to interrupt. “You’re not related to a Mike Morgan, are you?”

Alyssa looked confused, but she answered. “I have a cousin named Mike, why?”

“There’s a Mike Morgan at our camp,” Ed said. “Son of Hecate. You have the same eyes.”

“And you’ve been looking at Mike’s eyes why?” Sapphire muttered to her friend. Ed noticeably blushed. “I thought so.”

“Oh,” Alyssa said. “Who’s Hecate?”

“Our goddess of magic,” Sapphire told her. “Her kids are the only demigods who can do real magic.”

“Lou Ellen likes to turn people into pigs.” Lacy said to Shelby. “It drives our activities director nuts.” Shelby giggled. Sapphire grumbled. Lou Ellen had turned her into a bat last summer, accidentally, and she did not like the idea of being turned into any sort of animal.

They continued going around the table and each of the two dozen or so magician introduced themselves. Paul Dewar was an air elementalist who was following the path of Shu, Tucker Van Buren was a charm maker, Khufu the baboon grunted enthusiastically, and Shelby identified as an animal charmer, though she followed the path of Ptah, their god of creation.

“So, exactly why are you here?” Julian asked when they had all been introduced. “Sadie and Walt weren’t very specific.”

“We’re on a quest,” Sapphire explained. “We’re a pre-emptive peace envoy, trying to create an allegiance between our factions.”

“Basically, we’re here to make sure that Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians don’t become enemies and start World War Three.” Ed translated. He blinked suddenly and swore in Ancient Greek. “We were supposed to IM Camp Jupiter when we started talks.”

“Have we started talks?” Lacy asked.

“Yes,” Sapphire said.

Felix interrupted with another question. “What’s Camp Jupiter?”

“The Roman camp,” Sapphire said, digging into her bag for a drachma. “Ours is Camp Half-Blood.” She successfully extracted a drachma and Lacy helpfully held up the prism that she had packed. A rainbow stretched through the air between them.

“What are you doing?” Sadie asked.

“Iris Message,” Lacy told her. “It’s like how you guys use scrying bowls to communicate, we use IMs.” The magicians looked slightly less confused.

Sapphire flipped the drachma over in her gloved hand. “Should we call Frank or Reyna?”

“Frank,” Lacy and Ed chimed. Sapphire agreed. Calling Frank and telling him that they were sitting in a stronghold of the Egyptian gods was probably less dangerous than calling Reyna and telling her the same thing. Chiron was supposed to have told both _praetors_ about the quest, but Reyna would probably not be happy about being told after they’d already gone.

She would have liked to be involved in planning.

“Iris, goddess of the rainbow, please accept my offering.” Sapphire tossed the drachma into the rainbow. Tucker, who was sitting on the other side of Lacy, ducked, and then looked embarrassed when the gold coin disappeared into the rainbow. “Show me Frank Zhang at Camp Jupiter.”

Frank appeared in the rainbow. He was holding a scroll and was waving it angrily while he shouted at a cowering legionnaire. Through the window behind him they could see stars twinkling. “…have any idea how much damage you’ve caused?!” They had apparently not chosen a good time to call. The magicians stared. Sapphire coughed loudly and Frank noticed the IM. “Go outside and stand on one foot until I’ve decided on a punishment!” he said to the legionnaire, who scrambled to leave. They heard the sound of a door closing and then Frank turned to look at the message.

“Hi Sapphire,” he said, sounding completely wrung out.

Sapphire frowned. “Hi Frank. What’s wrong?”

Frank sighed. “A legacy of Trivia summoned a bunch of _venti_ and destroyed half of camp. We’ve been digging people out of the rubble for ten hours.”

Sapphire flinched. “Yikes. How many injured? Do you need extra medics?”

“At least fifty. More medics would be nice, but I think Reyna is organizing that.” Frank looked over her shoulder. “You’re not at camp.” he realized.

“We’re at Brooklyn House,” she told him. “Me, Ed from Cabin Eleven, and Lacy from Cabin Ten. We’re on a quest to ally with the Egyptian magicians. How much of Camp Jupiter was destroyed?”

“The entire camp of the Legion, the unicorn corral, and most of the roads,” Frank said. “Hannibal’s enclosure is a scrap heap.”

“New Rome? The aqueduct?” Sapphire asked.

“Untouched. We’re operating out of the Senate House. You’re with Egyptian magicians?” 

“Didn’t Chiron tell you?”

Frank thought for a moment. “Yes he did. Sorry, it’s been crazy around here. Reyna and I agreed that you guys can keep doing what you have to do.”

“Thanks,” Sapphire said. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

“ _vale_. Good luck.” 

Sapphire cut through the rainbow with her hand, ending the call.

“That sounds bad,” Walt said. “Will they be alright?”

Sapphire tugged on her braid. “I hope so. A least the city wasn’t hit, that would be really bad.” She realized that Frank hadn’t said anything about Hazel, and hoped that that was because she was completely fine.

“What are _venti_?” Sadie asked. “A type of monster?”

“Sounds like an evil espresso drink,” Sean commented.

“Her boyfriend said the same thing,” Ed said, pointing his thumb towards Sapphire. “We call them _anemoi thuellai._ They’re chaotic air spirits, only the wind gods can control them.”

“And Jason Grace,” Lacy added. “He’s the son of Jupiter.”

“It was stupid to summon them,” Sapphire muttered. 

“Air spirits,” Cleo murmured. “They wouldn’t happen to look like horses, would they?”

“The more chaotic ones,” Sapphire told her. “Why do you ask?”

Cleo’s eyes widened behind her glasses. She looked at Sadie. “You really have to talk to Carter. We have this scroll in the library... but I’d need his permission to show it to you.”

“Where are Carter and Zia?” Ed asked. “Walt mentioned that Carter was away.”

“They’re in Egypt,” Felix said. “Pharaoh stuff.” Ice penguins danced on the table in front of him. Actually, most of the magicians weren’t listening to the conversation anymore. They were talking among themselves, practising spells, and in general acting very much like ADHD demigods.

“They should be back in a few days,” Walt told them. “You could stay here in the meantime.”

“We could teach you magic!” Shelby suggested excitedly. 

“They can’t do magic Shelby,” Sean reminded her. The smile on her face drooped.

“We can’t do Greek or Roman magic,” Sapphire said. “I don’t think any demigod has ever tried Egyptian magic.”

“So, you’ll stay?” Shelby asked.

Sapphire looked at Ed and Lacy, who both nodded. “Sure,” Sapphire said.

“Agh!” Khufu grunted, slapping the table. 

“Then it’s settled,” Sadie announced. “We have rooms free. Each of you can have one.”

“One room is fine,” Lacy said for all three of them. They were outside of camp, and it would be better for them to all be together if they had nightmares.

“One room then,” Sadie said. “But first, it’s time for dinner.”

Food appeared on the previously empty buffet table. Philip splashed in his pool, and snapped up a duck that had gotten too close. Everyone grabbed a plate. Non-deadly chaos soon ensued.

The demigods felt right at home.


	11. Ed XI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quoting a bit of Cassandra Clare's Shadowhunter books in this one, because at the time I wrote this those books were second only to any books Rick Riordan ever wrote and ever will write in my list of favourites.  
> Oh, and Homeric Hymns. Because why not?

They were being held hostage by a little girl. When dinner was over, Shelby had kidnapped the three demigods, dragged them over to a couch, and started pelting them with questions. After the first dozen only Sapphire continued to answer.

“Who’s the oldest demigod?” Shelby asked, just as enthusiastically as she had asked her first question.

“Greek or Roman?” Sapphire asked.

“Both!”

“Roman, there’s a daughter of Juventas, I think, named Aeliana. Greek, Clarisse La Rue, daughter of Ares.”

“How old are they?”

Sapphire thought for a moment. “ _civis_ Aeliana is around eighty, and Clarisse is twenty-one.”

At that, Sadie looked up from her magazine with surprise. “The oldest Greek demigod is _what_?”

“Twenty-one,” Sapphire repeated. “We don’t tend to live long.” Ed didn’t get a chance to see Sadie’s, or any other magician’s, reaction to that statement, because Shelby’s next question made both him and Lacy look quickly at Sapphire.

“How’d you get that scar?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Ed saw Lacy’s face pale. Sapphire sat completely still except for a muscle that twitched in her jaw. Her eyes looked black. The other magicians in the living room had also noticed Sapphire’s state.

“Shelby!” Alyssa exclaimed.

“Shelby, that’s rude,” Julian chided.

Shelby began wilting under the deluge. “Sorry,” she said to Sapphire morosely.

Sapphire didn’t respond. Ed touched her sleeve gently. “Sapphire. It’s OK, we’re safe.” His best friend breathed in raggedly and he breathed out with relief. Unresponsive Sapphire was worrying, unresponsive and non-breathing Sapphire was just plain scary. Ed had learned that about a week after their friend Jeremy had died. The next level was unresponsive and mindlessly cruel and/or violent, which he had only seen her reach once and never wanted to see again. 

“‘ _Hestia, in the high dwellings of all, both deathless gods and men who walk on earth, you have gained an everlasting abode and highest honour,’”_ Sapphire murmured to herself in Ancient Greek. “Lacy, can I borrow your prism?”

Lacy blinked and then nodded. She handed the polished glass to Sapphire, who removed one of her gloves and held the prism in the palm of her left hand. Ed saw Lacy inch away, and he did the same. He really didn’t feel like dying or having dandelions sprout out of his ears.

The magicians looked at each other warily as they noticed the two demigods moving. “Excuse me,” Sadie said. “But what are you—”

Sapphire’s hand lit up. A few of the magicians gasped quietly, and Ed didn’t blame them. The first time he had witnessed Sapphire using her powers he had needed to pinch himself repeatedly before he was convinced that he wasn’t imagining things.

It had been painful. 

The golden light streamed through the prism and created a yellow-tinted rainbow, which Sapphire used to start an Iris Message. “Please, show me Leo Valdez at Camp Half-Blood.” The son of Hephaestus appeared in the rainbow with his sister, Nyssa, by his side. They were in the forge, judging by the machines behind them, and didn’t notice the IM because they were looking down at their workbench.

“We’ll put traps here, here and here,” Nyssa said, pointing at the map that was on the workbench in front of them. “The Hecate kids are putting their traps here and here, and the Hermes kids here and here.” She looked up, probably intending to look at something attached to the wall, and finally noticed the Iris Message. When she saw Sapphire’s face she elbowed Leo frantically.

“Ow! Nyssa, what…?” he looked up, saw the Iris Message, and his face fell. “Aimi, what’s wrong?” His upper arms burst into flames and Nyssa carefully inched out of the image.

“I should never have told you that story, Fire Boy. Oh, and you’re on fire.” 

Leo absentmindedly patted out the flames, leaving the sleeves of his shirt blackened. “Sapphire, you’re the colour of printer paper.” All of the magicians were listening to the conversation, even the ones who were trying not to. Ed saw Shelby turn red at Leo’s comment and Alyssa nod in agreement. “Please, tell me what’s wrong.”

“Someone just reminded me of _him,_ ” Sapphire said.

Leo clenched his jaw. “Where are you?”

“Brooklyn House. What was that about traps?”

“Camp may or may not be under attack soon, so we’re preparing. Who was it?”

“Leo, you can’t beat up a little girl,” Sapphire said.

“What do you mean Camp might be attacked?” Lacy exclaimed.

Leo rubbed the back of his head. “One of Will’s sisters had a dream. It might not happen, but it’s better to be ready.”

“Was there warning for Camp Jupiter too?” Ed asked. “You did hear about what happened there, right?”

Leo nodded. “We heard. Don’t know if there was any warning, but we sent over some of our medics. The Hecate Cabin managed to get their portal thing working.” It was about time, as they had apparently been working on a portal between the two camps since the clean-up from the Giant War had ended. Then again, according to Mike the magic they were working with was really tricky. Ed wondered how long the portal would have taken to finish if they could have worked with the Egyptian magicians. A day, probably. The Egyptians, at least those at Brooklyn House, seemed to take portals everywhere.

Sapphire took a breath and Ed was relieved to see that her colour was back to normal, risen-from-the-grave pale, not paper white. “Should we come back? I know you have Percy, and Nico, and Jason but…”

Leo shook his head. “Chiron said that we’re not recalling any quests, and Hazel said that you’re with the Egyptians already.”

“You talked to Hazel?” Sapphire asked quickly. “She’s OK? Not buried?”

“You’re talking about the girl who can create tunnels,” Leo pointed out. “And besides, you’d know if she was in danger.”

Sapphire rubbed the tattoo on the back of her neck and blushed, embarrassed. “I worry,” she defended herself. “She’s my sister, and Nico’s sister. You know how he gets.” 

Ed and Lacy nodded with Leo. When it came to the children of the Big Three who were currently alive, Nico was definitely the scariest and the most overprotective. Woe betide anyone or anything that harmed his family! Percy Jackson came a very (very) close second though. Or maybe Jason Grace. Hazel was pretty scary in her own right and Sapphire…

All Big Three kids were scary and overprotective.

Ed blinked as he realized he’d lost track of the conversation. Dam ADHD, can’t take a dam vacation. Maybe go to Hoover Dam… He was zoning out again.

“…feels guilty.” Leo was saying. “He resigns, moves across the country, and then the Twelfth Legion is attacked by monsters that only he can control. Piper’s been trying to talk him out of it.” He was obviously talking about Jason. Ed didn’t blame the guy for feeling guilty, anyone would.

“I hope you didn’t leave those two alone,” Sapphire said seriously. “After Clari—” She cut herself off. “Never mind. Forget it. Sadie, do you guys have memory erasing spells?”

“I don’t think so,” Sadie said slowly.

“Pity,” Sapphire said, massaging her temples.

“ _Please insert another drachma for two more minutes,”_ said the voice of Fleecy the cloud nymph from the rainbow. Sapphire looked at Leo and said something in automaton. He smiled and replied, also in automaton. The magicians looked confused at the clicking and creaking sounds that they were making, but Lacy and Ed just rolled their eyes at each other.

“Bye Leo,” Sapphire said finally.

“Bye,” Leo said.

Lacy and Ed waved to the son of Hephaestus and the Iris Message ended of its own accord. Sapphire looked down at the prism in her hand, blinked, and quickly gave it back to Lacy.

Sadie coughed. “It’s getting late,” she said. “How about we find you that room I promised?” The three demigods thankfully got up and followed the quasi daughter of Osiris out of the room of staring magicians. At the stairs, Ed pulled Sapphire aside.

“You know I’m always here for you,” he said quietly.

“I know.” she replied. “You’re my best friend, my _parabatai_ … but I needed someone who was there.” Ed knew what she meant. If someone were to drag his memories of the deaths of Jeremy and Robert into the light, then he would only be able to talk to Sapphire, not Amber, or Mike, or their mortal friend Elizabeth. He would need someone who understood everything.

“I understand,” he told her. “Just remember, alright?” Sapphire nodded.

“Are you two coming?” Lacy called from the top of the first flight of stairs.

“Coming!” Sapphire shouted. They began the ascent.

“Oh, and Sapphire, we’ve already met Percy Jackson and Sadie Kane. We don’t need to add Isabelle Lightwood and Magnus Bane to that list,” Ed said. 

“What about Alec? Didn’t you have a crush on him after _City of Glass_?” Ed felt his face turn red. “Of course,” Sapphire continued. “I guess that wouldn’t matter now thanks to a certain son of Hecate…”

“Sapphire!” His best friend giggled and ran up the stairs. “You are not a child of Aphrodite!” he shouted after her.

The one child of Aphrodite present looked back and forth between the two of them, and, when Ed had reached the landing, said, “She’s right, you know.”

Ed put his face in his hands and counted to three. When he looked up he had a small smile on his face. “You know me way too well.”

Sapphire grinned. “ _parabatai,_ remember?”

_Entreat me not to leave thee,_

_Or return from following after thee—_

The girls continued up the stairs and Ed followed.

_For whither thou goest, I will go._


	12. Ed XII

A row of sarcophagi was standing at the end of a long, dark room. Ed stood stock still, forced to watch as they opened slowly. He let out a strangled cry.

His brother Davey.

Their mother.

Sapphire.

Jeremy.

Elizabeth.

Amber.

Richie.

Uncle Harrold and Aunt Mariko, Sapphire, Amber, and Richie’s parents.

Sera, Jeremy’s older sister, who had moved to her aunt’s place in Egypt after her parents and brother died.

Mike.

Lacy.

Each of them was wrapped in mummy linens up to their necks. As Ed struggled against the invisible force that was holding him captive, each person opened their eyes to reveal dead black orbs. Mouths opened and a hissing voice echoed loudly throughout the room, projected from Ed’s deceased friends and family.

_“SERVE OR PERISH!”_

Ed screamed and sat straight up. His eyes darted around, and he realized that he was safely in his sleeping bag on the floor of the quest group’s room in Brooklyn House. He rubbed a hand across his face, trying to erase the last cobwebs of his nightmare. Faint light was filtering through the curtain, illuminating the bed cradling Lacy’s sleeping form and Sapphire’s empty sleeping bag. When Ed saw that Sapphire wasn’t in the room, he prepared to start moderate panicking. However, just as he was about to get up shadows gathered in the corner by the closet and Sapphire stepped into the room.

“Where were you?” he whispered, trying not to wake up Lacy.

“Zhōngguó,” she replied. “Wǒ zuòle yīgè èmèng.”*

Ed blinked. “Pardon?” Since his mother spoke Cantonese, he understood maybe an eighth of what his friend has said. The rest had gone completely over his head. 

“Wŏ rènshì yīge nǚhái, shéi shì Frank de qīnqī,” she added helpfully, “yě, wǒ huì shuō zhōngwén.”*

“Yeah,” Ed said dryly. “I sort of guessed that last part.” He personally thought that Sapphire’s newest power was almost more trouble than it was worth. He didn’t even know where she got it from. Hear a new language, be stuck speaking it for twelve hours, and then be able to speak it whenever you want. The ‘stuck speaking (insert language here) for twelve hours’ part was what made it _almost_ more trouble than it was worth. There was also the fact that it only worked with speaking, not reading, but mostly it was the twelve hours.

A lot of bad stuff could happen in twelve hours.

“How long had it been?” he asked.

Sapphire frowned and began counting on her fingers. “Shíyī* hours,” she said at last. “Oh, make that twelve. Time difference.”

Lacy began murmuring. Ed and Sapphire went completely silent while the daughter of Aphrodite tossed and turned. After a little while she went back to sleeping peacefully.

“What time is it now?” Sapphire whispered when they were sure that they wouldn’t startle Lacy awake.

Ed squinted at his watch. “Five twenty-eight AM. Maybe we should wake her up.” 

They both looked towards Lacy, who had begun thrashing in her sleep again, her head plastered against the ivory headrest in a way that looked painful. Sapphire walked carefully over to the bed and placed a hand gently on Lacy’s shoulder. She quickly dove to the floor when the other girl shot up and threw out a right hook. “Lacy, relax! It’s just me, Sapphire.” 

Lacy looked down at her and her bottom lip began to wobble. Zero point five seconds later she had burst into tears. “Their eyes, Sapphire!” she sobbed as Sapphire wrapped her in a comforting hug. “Oh gods, their eyes!”

Lacy cried loudly into Sapphire’s shoulder. Sapphire sang to her quietly until there was a knock on the door. Then she helped Lacy wipe away her tears while Ed racked his fingers through his hair and went to open the door. Sadie Kane pushed right past him before he could say anything.

“I heard crying. What’s wrong?” she asked when she saw Lacy’s tear-stained face. Funny, Ed was pretty sure that the rooms were supposed to be soundproof.

“Nightmares,” Sapphire inferred. “Or maybe demigod dreams.” 

Ed frowned. “All three of us? That can’t be a coincidence.”

“Four,” Sadie said. “If your ‘demigod dreams’ are like our _ba_ travel dreams.”

Ed and Sapphire looked at each other. _We need to talk about this._ Sapphire communicated silently. _Something’s happening._

 _Agreed._ Ed looked at Sadie, who was tugging her hair nervously. “We really have to talk.”

* * *

It was yet another end-of-the-world sit-down meal. The senior magicians, Sadie, Walt, Sean, Julian, Alyssa, Cleo, Jaz, and a few others, were sitting around the dining table while Ed described what he had seen in his dream. When he was finished, Lacy immediately jumped in to tell them about her dream, which had involved being attacked by possessed _karpoi_ , grain spirits, and her half-brother Hasan, who had been killed in the Giant War.

“Their eyes were black,” she said. “Black from corner to corner. And cold and angry, like a Titan’s.”

“I’m guessing titan equals bad?” Sadie asked.

“Usually,” Lacy said wobbly. Jaz put a hand on her arm and smiled reassuringly.

Sapphire went next, and Ed had to admit that her dream was probably the most disturbing of the three. It took place in her father’s throne room, and Olympus, _and_ the Egyptian Hall of Judgment, all at the same time. The three opposing locations were superimposed on each other and had been rippling like they wanted to fly apart. Hades’ and Persephone’s thrones had also been layered over. Persephone’s throne was occupying the same space as Hera’s, and Hades’ was fighting with the thrones of Zeus and Osiris. The gods’ thrones were occupied by a god (“He was definitely a god.”) with a curling beard and slicked back black hair who was wearing grey robes and the double red-and-white crown of Egypt.

The goddesses’ thrones had been empty, but the god had held out his hand to Sapphire and helped her to take a seat in her mother’s and aunt’s thrones. In front of them was a sea of frightened people. Sapphire hadn’t named any names, but from what she described as happening next gave Ed a fair idea of who the people were. Jeremy Asher, Cora Willis, basically anyone and everyone who had wronged her. As she watched flames had rippled out from the thrones and set the entire crowd on fire. Thankfully, Sapphire didn’t detail the screams and the smell of burning flesh that she had probably experienced.

Demigod dreams were almost always frightfully realistic.

The god had turned to her and fixed her with solid black eyes. “ _Join me,”_ he had offered. “ _And watch them burn.”_

“Well,” Sean said after Sapphire finished talking. “That’s not disturbing at all.” By which he of course meant that it was very disturbing. His voice was absolutely _dripping_ with sarcasm.

“Sadie, what did you see?” Walt asked.

Sadie shrugged. “Oh, not much. Just a god in Babylon pacing back and forth and muttering to himself about how he deserved to rule the world.”

Sadie’s announcement made everyone around the table fall into complete silence as they digested that particular piece of information. Surprisingly, it was Sapphire who was first to speak.

“And here I was thinking that we _wouldn’t_ be having a war this summer.” She sighed. “Almost three years…” The others murmured sounds of agreement.

Lacy sighed. “We’d better tell Chiron and Mr. D.”

“And Frank and Reyna,” Ed added.

“Carter and Uncle Amos,” Sadie pointed out.

“Zia,” Walt said. “She might have some ideas. Anubis hasn’t come up with anything yet.”

“I’ll start doing research,” Cleo volunteered. “A god from Babylon, who has an obsession with dead people and wants to rule the world. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

Jaz pushed her chair back. “If there’s going to be a war I’d better start getting the infirmary ready.”

“I’ll help you,” Julian volunteered. “I’ve been in there enough times.”

Jaz nodded. “Thanks. Just don’t break anything.”

“All right,” Sadie decided. “The three of you do as you just said. Walt and I will contact the First Nome, and the demigods will contact the people that they have to. Everyone else, follow your normal schedules. The more training we can get the better. Besides, there’s no need to panic yet.”

“Will you tell us when we need to panic?” Cleo asked.

“Of course,” Sadie said.

“Oh joy,” Sapphire muttered. “Well, here’s to not dying.” She raised her glass of water in a mock toast.

“Hear, hear,” Ed agreed. On that note, everyone began rising from their seats. Everyone except the demigods, who were preparing to send IMs, and Sean, who was rocking his chair onto its back legs.

“You’re going to fall and crack your head open,” Sapphire told him. “Don’t you have a class to go to or something?” 

Sean continued rocking his chair with a lazy smile on his face. “I’m teaching today. Walt asked me to take care of your first magic lesson.” He rocked his chair back again, but this time his foot slipped and he fell backwards with a crash. “Ow!”

From his pool, Philip made a hissing noise that sounded like a sigh. Sean sat up and rubbed the back of his head, looking accusingly at Sapphire.

Sapphire just shrugged. “You should have listened.”

“I’m going to go get my prism,” Lacy murmured, darting out of the room. Sapphire rolled her eyes and walked around to the other side of the table and gave Sean a hand up.

“Three Greek demigods learning Egyptian magic,” Ed muttered. He racked his fingers through his hair. “What could possibly go wrong?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations from Mandarin pinyin*:  
> “China. I had a nightmare.”  
> “I met a girl who is Frank’s relative. Also, I can speak Chinese (Mandarin).”  
> “Eleven”  
> These translations are based off of my own knowledge with help from Google Translate. If you have better translations (or see somewhere where I totally messed up) please let me know.


	13. We Actually Miss Set

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are sort of two points of view in this one chapter. Everything that's in bold text is Anubis, everything that isn't is Walt.

W **A**

A **N**

L **U**

T **B**

**I**

**S**

Something every magician from Brooklyn House figures out relatively quickly: Scrying bowl messages are usually bad news.

**Almost always bad news.**

That’s the same thing.

**No. ‘Almost always’ is more often than ‘usually’.**

I’m pretty sure they mean the same thing.

**Neither of us are a walking dictionary. That’s Carter’s job.**

Good point. Uhh…What was I talking about?

**The message to Carter, Zia, and the Chief Lector.**

Right. After our after-breakfast ‘oh-great-another-war’ meeting, Sadie and we broke into Carter’s room to use his scrying bowl.

Yes, he had actually left his room locked when he and Zia went to Egypt. _And_ the door locked itself after it was closed. It was complete overkill.

**It’s not like anyone would steal from him.**

Except maybe the fangirls that visit from other nomes sometimes.

**It’s almost funny how they think they’ll marry him and become Great Royal Wife. Mostly though, it’s just pathetic.**

Everyone knows that Zia’s got that spot sewn up.

**Completely**.

You know, Anubis, we really should—

**Walt! That’s a secret!**

Oops.

**Not to mention that we’ll never get anywhere if we keep interrupting ourselves.**

Very true.

Yes folks, it’s like this in our head all the time. Moving on. 

**Once we’d broken in (and unlocked the doors to the balcony, the only lock in the room that actually made sense) we stood around the scrying bowl and tried to figure out where in the First Nome Carter, Zia and Amos would be. Our scrying bowls are a lot like Greek Iris Messages in that sense. You have to know approximately where someone is in order to properly contact them. It wouldn’t do any good to aim for the First Nome if the person you were trying to contact was in Tanzania.**

“I think we should try the Hall of Ages,” Sadie said eventually. “Zia did say they would probably be stuck in there most of the time.”

“Alright,” we said. I waved our hand over the bowl, picturing the view we would get from the scrying bowl in the Hall of Ages. The oil rippled and then showed a white ceiling that probably could have been anywhere. Sadie leaned over the bowl.

“Hullo! Carter? Zia? Uncle Amos?” she called. Almost at once the three of them appeared in front of the ceiling. **Carter looked a bit flustered.**

“Hello Sadie,” Amos said. “Walt. How are you?”

Sadie smiled winningly. **Not a cute smile, a ‘just-wanted-to-let-you-know-that-the-world-is-probably-going-to-end-love-you’ smile.**

As the millennia old god in this symbiotic relationship, you aren’t supposed to say stuff like that.

**I can say what I want.**

Tell that to my mom.

**No way! Your mom is crazy scary.**

…

**Oh, come on. You know it’s true.**

…

**Are you not talking now?**

…

**Fine.**

**“We’re great,” Sadie replied. “We’ve just got an unknown god running around who probably wants to kill us, and a group of Greek demigods staying here.”**

**“What?!” Amos, Carter, and Zia exclaimed in unison. Sadie and we quickly explained what had happened over the past few hours.**

**“You went to Manhattan!?” Amos almost shouted. I don’t know why he was so upset. All we did was accidentally portal to the stronghold of the Greek gods with two dozen demons in tow. Really, it wasn’t a big deal.**

**That was me being sarcastic. If Zeus had found out that we were there without permission he would probably have incinerated us on the spot. I think the only reason he didn’t was because we were with demigods. That or he didn’t find out.**

**“It was an accident!” Sadie defended. “My portal went wonky!” Amos muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘darn Hermes’. His image blurred for a moment.**

**“Carter,” Walt said quickly. “Do you have any idea who this god could be?”**

**“Doesn’t Anubis know?” Carter asked.**

**“No,” I replied. “Just Egypt alone has more gods that are forgotten than remembered. Adding Greece and Rome makes it even more difficult. I don’t know where to even start starting.”**

**“Greece and Rome,” Zia murmured, thinking. “Sadie, where did you say the god in your dream was?”**

**“Babylon,” Sadie said at once. “Though I have absolutely no idea how I know that.”**

**“Hmmm… And the demigod, not your friend, the other girl,” Zia said.**

**“Sapphire,” we supplied.**

**“Yes, her. She said that the same god was sitting on thrones of Greek, Roman and Egyptian gods, right?”**

**Sadie and we nodded. Carter suddenly seemed to realize what his girlfriend was thinking.**

**“It might not be the same god,” he said hopefully. “It might have been, like, Thantos or something.”**

**“Wearing the crown of Egypt?” we said.**

**Carter sighed. “We can hope.”**

**“Zia, who do you believe this god is?” Amos asked.**

**Zia reflexively touched her vulture amulet. “Serapis,” she said quietly.**

**“Who?” Sadie asked.**

**“Serapis,” Carter repeated. “He has a temple in Babylon, which would be why you saw him there, and he was worshiped by Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.”**

**“Oh. Him,” I said. Just hearing his name was all I needed to remember him. Serapis was extremely big headed, I guess megalomaniac isn’t such a big jump, and he sort of disappeared after the magicians and demigods split up.**

**As a side note, I am completely justified in thinking that demigods had died out. Their gods wouldn’t have disappeared, they have always been popular, but demigods have always had short lifespans, and when I stopped hearing about them… It was a logical conclusion.**

**“Why would Serapis want to take over the world?” Zia asked. “He was very well liked.”**

**“The demigods talked about their gods having Greek/Roman identity issues around the same time our gods were preparing to fight Apophis,” Sadie mentioned. “Maybe the stress from all three directions sent him round the twist.”**

**We cleared our throat. “Actually, if that was the case then Isis and a few others would have gone mad. Some of us were worshiped by the Greeks and Romans in the old days. It’s more likely that he’s angry about all of us forgetting about him.”**

**Sadie and Carter looked puzzled “Why would he be angry about that?” Carter asked. Zia looked like she was trying not to roll her eyes.**

**“Think Carter,” Amos said. “When’s the last time you heard any magician even mention Serapis?”**

**Carter quickly opened his mouth to answer and just as quickly closed it again. “So what? We’re going to be fighting a god who’s having a hissy fit?”**

**“He was always arrogant,” I told Sadie. “And he liked overkill.”**

**Sadie sighed. “Bloody wonderful.”**

**“I think we can all agree that there’s likely to be some sort of attack against both us and the demigods,” Amos said. “The real question is what to do about it.”**

**“Prepare,” Carter, Zia, Sadie and we all chimed. After fighting Apophis, getting ready to fight Serapis and whatever monsters he recruited probably wouldn’t be too hard.**

Maybe that’s just a bit overconfident.

**You’re talking now?**

I get talked over enough with Sadie. Just don’t insult my mom again.

**I didn’t…Fine.**

Sadie sighed again. “Do you know what’s scary? I think I actually miss the days when our biggest problem was the god of Chaos. It was much simpler.” Carter and Amos actually nodded in agreement, which was a lot scarier.

After that we didn’t really have much to talk about. Carter and Sadie made small talk (read: argued) until someone entered the Hall of Ages and needed their attention. We said goodbye and the image in the oil disappeared.

**“Well,” Sadie said after the message had ended. “That was helpful.” We nodded. We now had a good idea of who had sent the demigods their threatening dreams. Of course, we could have been completely wrong, but I was pretty sure that we weren’t.**

**“Let’s see if Cleo has found anything,” Walt suggested.**

**“And we could ask her if the library has anything on Serapis,” I added.**

Sadie nodded. We turned to the balcony doors, only to see that they had locked behind us. Of course, this lock was pretty much unbreakable. **Carter is a very strong magician.** We tried to open the doors. Nothing. We cursed.

Sadie shook her head with exasperation. “I swear he always does this. Honestly.”

I sighed. “Should we try to break down the door?”

Sadie took out her staff. “I have a better idea.”

**About twenty minutes later Cleo screamed when a giant bird carrying a smaller bird and a jackal burst into the library.**


	14. Sapphire XIV

Magic lessons were going badly, and that was before Ed summoned a venomous snake. They started as most magicians did, trying to channel their magic through scrolls, but none of them were actually able to do anything. Sapphire was stressing out about the unknown god and the disasters at both camps. Every hieroglyph she wrote stuck to the scroll like mud. Lacy had made her ink bottle explode when she accidentally wrote ‘destroy’ right beside the hieroglyph for ‘ink’. All Ed’s words were walking off the scroll and turning into puddles on the table.

“Uh, at least we know that you have magic,” Sean said as he wiped ink off his face and brushed pieces of ceramic out of his hair.

“Maybe it will only work properly if we find our specialty,” Lacy suggested. “We could go through them systematically.” It was a good idea, but when they went through hieroglyphs commonly used by healers, necromancers, and charm makers without any success they all started to get discouraged.

“Shouldn’t you be good at death magic?” Sean asked Sapphire.

“I can’t raise anything bigger than a wishbone,” she snapped. “I’m no necromancer, that’s Nico’s job.”

“Sapphire, relax,” Ed said. Sapphire huffed and turned back to her scroll. Sean sighed and assigned each of them a different hieroglyph to try using. Sapphire carefully formed the hieroglyph for ‘stone’ and clenched her jaw as it did nothing.

“Snake,” Ed said clearly after he finished writing his hieroglyph. Sapphire looked over just in time to see the hieroglyph peel itself off the page and turn into a striped snake. Sapphire gasped and Lacy shrieked and pushed her chair back.

“Red yellow!” Sitting in front of Ed with its head weaving through the air was a coral snake. A snake that most people knew was venomous. Red touches yellow and all that.

A cubic metre of water suddenly materialized above them and realized that it had to follow the laws of gravity. Sean, the three demigods, and the snake were all drenched with salt water. Lacy began to look like a raccoon because her makeup started to run. 

The snake did not look happy. Sapphire wouldn’t be happy either, if she didn’t have eyelids and had just been soaked in brine. 

“Good work, Lacy,” Sean said, even as he stared at the snake. “But why was it salt water?”

“I don’t know,” Lacy squeaked. “I’m a bit preoccupied with the venomous reptile.”

The snake hissed.

“Any ideas?” Sapphire asked. Her method for dealing with dangerous creatures was specified for monsters. ‘Hit with sword until dead, repeat as needed’ was probably not going to work in this case.

“Don’t move,” Sean suggested. Water dripped off the end of his nose. Sapphire idly wondered why being a water elementalist was so different from being a child of Poseidon or any of the other water gods. They couldn’t get wet unless they wanted to, but water elementalists didn’t seem to have that option. Maybe it was the fact that it wasn’t genetic, except godly genes were weird and could hypothetically result in—

The snake hissed again. Right, they had a venomous reptile to deal with.

Sean carefully spoke a spell and a blue dome shimmered into existence above the snake. “That should hold it until—” The snake struck out at the dome and it flickered alarmingly.

Sapphire quickly waved her hand and made her own dome of shadows to contain the snake. She raised an eyebrow at Sean. “‘Should hold it’?”

Sean blushed. “You don’t have to show off.”

“I am not showing off, I’d just rather not get bitten.” 

Lacy intervened before the two of them could get into a full on argument. “Guys, now that we’ve caught it, what are we going to do with it?” The four of them looked at each other.

“Send it to Cora by Hermes Express?” Sapphire suggested.

“No!” Ed and Lacy exclaimed in unison. Sapphire grinned to show that she was joking.

Ed shook his head. “Not funny Saph. Not funny at…Okay, maybe a little funny.”

“Pour l'amour de…!” Lacy rolled her eyes towards the ceiling helplessly.

Sean took out his wand and pointed it at the snake’s dome. “Do any of you know where this snake is from?” he asked.

“Sierra Vista, Arizona,” Ed said at once. They all looked at him with surprise.

“You know this how?” Sapphire wondered.

Ed blinked. “Uh…he told me? I think.”

Sapphire looked at Lacy. “I don’t remember Hermes kids being able to talk to snakes.”

“Neither do I,” Lacy admitted.

“Animal charmer,” Sean announced. He rolled up his sleeves. “So Sierra Vista it is. Could you get rid of the shadows please?” Sapphire sighed and muttered that Sean had better cast his spell fast.

The shadow dome melted away, revealing a very agitated snake. He struck at Sean’s barrier spell again, and this time was successful in bringing it down. Lacy squeaked. Sean spoke a spell and blue hieroglyphs surrounded the snake. The hieroglyphs flashed once and then vanished, taking the snake with them.

“Thank the gods,” Sapphire muttered. “Uh… what do we do now?”

The answer to that was “Practice”. After they dried off, Sean had Ed try to summon other animals, keeping one eye on him at all times, and he began to work with Lacy on water elementalist spells. Sapphire though was still cycling through hieroglyphs.

‘Water’? No.

‘Sword’? No.

‘Wind’? No.

‘Owl’? That hieroglyph peeled off the page and became a screech owl, her father’s sacred animal, but it disappeared in a puff of feathers a second later. She cursed in automation and blew a fluffy plume off her nose. 

Ed looked up from the corn snake he’d summoned. “Why don’t you try ‘ _a'max’_?” he suggested with a yawn.

Sapphire frowned. “‘Burn’? I’m not a daughter of Hephaestus.”

Lacy lost control of the sphere of water she was creating and it exploded spectacularly. “Don’t you dare even suggest that!” she shrieked to Sapphire. Ed jerked to alertness and caused his bottle of ink to wobble alarmingly. He grabbed it before it could spill. Sean looked shocked at Lacy’s sudden shouting. “You and Leo are perfect together!”

“Lacy,” Sapphire said after a startled blink, “you just reached Aphrodite Level Twelve and, as Leila concluded, that’s the AL that started the Trojan War. Please, dial it back.”

Lacy took a few calming breaths. “Sorry,” she apologized. “It’s just…”

Sapphire patted her shoulder. “Don’t apologize. You do get high-strung when you’re tired. Just try to stay below AL Eleven in the future, kay?” Lacy nodded, dazed.

There was a quiet snore and they all looked towards it. Somewhere between Lacy’s yelling and her apology, Ed had fallen asleep with his head on the table. Sapphire shook her head. She was not used to being the person who wasn’t exhausted due to using powers. She looked at Sean. “Maybe we should take a break?”

Sean thought for a moment. “Try one more first.” He showed her how to write the hieroglyph for ‘fire’. “It’s simpler than ‘burn’, and that spell works better with a wand anyway. Say it.”

“Fire.” She wasn’t expecting for anything to happen, so she fell out of her chair when a tower of flames burst from the paper. “Holy Hestia!”

Sean summoned a few litres of water and quickly put the fire out. Lacy helped her to her feet. Somehow Ed had managed to stay asleep, but the ends of some of the hairs on the top if his head were singed. He wouldn’t be very happy about that.

“Well, that went…well,” Sapphire said when she had regained her power of speech. “Am I missing an eyebrow?” Lacy shook her head. “Great.”

Sean raked his fingers through his dark hair, causing it to stand on end in a cute way. “Now we should take a break.” 

Their break lasted for all of twelve seconds. Then Khufu came running into the room with his Lakers jersey flapping. “Agh! Agh!”

“Ahh!” Ed said, as he woke up with a start. “What’s wrong?”

Sean frowned. “Walt, Sadie, and Cleo have found something. They want all of us to come to the library.”

Ed rubbed his eyes. “Did Khufu say what they found?”

Sean nodded.

“What is it?” Lacy asked when he didn’t say anything more. “Tell us!”

“They have the name of the god who threatened you,” he replied. “And they think they know what his plan is.”

That was good. When they IM’d, Annabeth did say that she’d get her cabin to try to find something, despite the multiple crises they were fielding at the moment. If they had the name of the god then their research could go a lot faster.

“Who’s the god?” Sapphire asked.

“Agh,” Khufu grunted.

“Serapis,” Sean translated.

Lacy turned pale. Sapphire grabbed onto her arm because it seriously looked like the daughter of Aphrodite was going to faint. “Lacy! Lacy, talk to us!”

Ed got out of his seat and helped Sapphire to move Lacy into the chair. Sean helpfully sprayed cold water into her face, which obliterated the makeup she had left. She wouldn’t be happy about that, but the blast of cold at least seemed to jolt her out of her fog. She blinked.

“He hates children of Aphrodite,” she murmured. None of them had to ask which ‘he’ she meant. “New York, 1999. Paris, 2004. Montréal, 2007. Lyon, 2011. Greenwood, 2013.”

“He’s killed your siblings?” Sapphire whispered. Lacy nodded. Sapphire sucked in a breath. She had never heard of any god outside of the elder Olympians who purposefully targeted the children of another god. Sure, Ares fought with demigods who ticked him off and Apollo hated Dakota’s guts (long story that involves alcohol and a badger, don’t ask), but those were personal god vs. demigod vendettas. Apollo didn’t hate Bacchus’ other children (or legacies) and Ares… well, Ares hated just about everyone so maybe he wasn’t a good example.

Ed grimaced. “How hard do you think it will be to kill him?”

“No idea.” Sapphire knelt down and gave Lacy a hug. “Let’s go to the library,” she said as she stood. “We’ll IM Annabeth from there.”

“Good idea,” Lacy said quietly. She looked up, her eyes like stones. “We have a battle plan to make.”


	15. Pharaohs and Fainting and Monsters, Oh my!

S

A

D

I

E

The fact that Serapis had it out for Aphrodite kids? Just another not-so-wonderful thing to add to our pile of problems. Of course our day could still get worst, and it did.

Just as Annabeth, a scary blond daughter of Athena (there’s something I never thought I would say), was going to end the Iris Message that the eight of us (me, Walt/Anubis, Cleo, Sean, Annabeth, Lacy, Sapphire, and Ed) had been using to talk about our rapidly growing godly problem, a black-haired man came running into her cabin.

“Percy?” Annabeth said with surprise. “What’s wrong? You’re supposed to be supervising—”

“They’re dead,” the man, Percy, interrupted, gasping. I guessed that he had run all the way from whatever activity he was supposed to be supervising. “They’re all dead.” The three demigods on our end of the message looked horrified.

“Percy, who’s dead?” Sapphire asked, her voice wobbling.

Percy didn’t even look surprised when he noticed the Iris Message. “The Third,” he replied woodenly. “The Third Cohort is dead.”

Annabeth gasped. On our end, Ed turned pale, and Lacy and Sapphire both began tearing up.

“That, that can’t be true,” Sapphire insisted. “I would know if—Oh gods, my ears have been ringing since yesterday.”

“They dug them out of their barracks an hour ago,” Percy said. “The building collapsed on top of them. No one made it out.”

“Ryan and Rella were part of the Third,” Ed whispered. Lacy started crying in earnest. Dark sparks started coming out of the wrists of Sapphire’s gloves and Cleo, who was sitting next to her, carefully inched away.

“You should go,” Sapphire told Percy and Annabeth. “Someone will have to tell the rest of the camp.”

“Yeah,” Annabeth agreed, looking slightly dazed. “We’ll talk to you later.” Percy cut the connection.

“Oh gods,” Lacy choked out. “Oh gods.”

“How…how many people is a cohort?” I asked.

“Eighty,” Ed replied. He put his head in his hands. “Eighty.”

The three magicians and one god in the room looked at each other. Even Anubis looked shocked. It was definitely a good thing that the library was empty aside from our group, the rest of the nome wouldn’t know how to react. Eighty people dead because of a spell gone wrong, they’d never want to do magic again.

“Can we…stop for today?” Sapphire asked me and Walt/Anubis. We nodded. The three demigods got up and left the room, though Sapphire stopped briefly to ask where the gym was. After failing to give helpful directions, Sean got out of his chair and left with them.

“That’s terrible,” Cleo said quietly. “The spell that did that, it was the same one that Setne used on the Texas Nome, right?”

“I think so.” I slumped in my chair. “How many magicians have ever died at once? Twenty? Thirty?”

“Thirty-five,” Anubis corrected. “During the Blitz.” We looked at each other mournfully.

“Do you think they’ll want to leave for the funerals?” I asked.

“Quests don’t seem to get interrupted for anything,” Walt noted. “Even if they want to go, they might not be able to.” That was a sad thought. Their friends were dead and they wouldn’t be allowed to go to the funerals. 

A familiar sound came from the stairs and our wonderful baboon jumped into the chair that Lacy had recently vacated. “Agh,” he said. 

“Really?” Walt asked. “I thought that wouldn’t be for a while.”

“Agh,” Khufu grunted with a shrug. Then he hopped out of the chair and ran back upstairs.

I sighed. “Well, let’s go then. Mustn’t keep the pharaoh waiting.” 

Carter and Zia were in the entrance hall, surrounded by a group of people who were _supposed_ to be at lessons. They were all exclaiming over my brother and his girlfriend, and several of the youngest magicians were giving them hugs. Khufu was standing beside Carter, probably giving him a play-by-play recap of the last Lakers game, or telling him what was happening to send us to hell in a hand-basket this time. One of the kids had jumped on Carter’s back, and he was struggling to give him a piggyback ride while juggling his magician’s kit. Zia had a hand over her mouth and was obviously trying not to laugh. 

“Let them breathe, people!” I shouted. The crowd backed off, and the little boy let go of Carter’s neck and floated slowly to the floor.

“Hey, Sadie,” Carter coughed out after he took in much needed air. “Cleo. Walt.”

“Carter.” Walt nodded. “Zia.”

“Nora!” one of the new ankle biters squealed. Julian, ever the babysitter, rounded up all our little kids and ushered them out of the hall.

“What are you doing back so early?” I asked. “And why are there people here who should be _in class_?” Taking the hint, the rest of the crowd scattered. Carter raked his fingers through his hair.

“We have a problem,” he said. Cleo, Walt/Anubis and I walked up to them, and I punched Carter’s arm. “Ow,” he complained.

“Of course we have a problem you ridiculous man!” I said.

Zia rolled her eyes. “What Carter is trying to say is that we now have a bigger problem.” Oh, big surprise. Just when we think it can’t get any worse…

“What happened?” I groaned. Walt put a hand on my shoulder.

“A diviner at the First Nome had a vision,” Carter said. “Where are the demigods? We need them to know about this.”

“They’re in the gym,” Cleo said.

Zia slung her wand over her shoulder. “Then let’s go see them.” 

* * *

The demigods were destroying stuff.

We walked into the gym and immediately had to duck so that we weren’t hit with the bronze knives that sliced through a shadowy monster in front of us and then just kept on going. The whole gym was filled with shadow monsters and warrior shabti that Sean had probably activated. Most of the shabti were in pieces on the floor, and the monsters that were hit dissolved into shadows before reforming somewhere else in the room.

The three demigods were fighting like deadly tornadoes, and Sean was doing his best to keep up. As we were watching, Sapphire sliced a shabti into three pieces with two black swords and Lacy finished beheading a large dog-shaped monster with what looked like a very small knife. Carter, Zia and Cleo looked stunned. They had never seen demigods in action before.

“Uhh…” Carter said, at a complete loss for words. I wish I could have taken a picture.

Finally, Ed noticed that it wasn’t just the four of them in the room anymore. He shouted for a halt. All the monsters dissolved and the shadows that were supposed to be in the room returned. Sean leaned on his staff and breathed heavily.

“Hello,” Sapphire said. She twisted a round silver thing that was on the end of the longer of her two swords and both of the weapons vanished.

“Uh…hi,” Carter said. He eyed the few shabti that were still tottering around. Ed noticed and quickly spoke the command word, shrinking them back into statues.

“Carter Kane?” Ed asked as we walked into the room. “And Zia Rashid?”

“Yes,” Zia replied. “And you are?”

“I’m Ed Newton, son of Hermes. This is Lacy Vogels, daughter of Aphrodite, and Sapphire Banks, daughter of Hades and Persephone.” Ed gestured in turn to each of his friends. Lacy gave a half-hearted wave and Sapphire didn’t even bother.

“That was impressive,” Carter commented, obviously referring to what he had seen of their fighting.

Sapphire shrugged. “You should see Percy,” she said shortly. Then, “What’s wrong?” Did all demigods assume that something was wrong when someone came to speak to them? Maybe it was a child of Hades thing.

Carter raked his fingers though his hair again. “One of the diviners at the First Nome had a vision,” he said again. The eyes of the three demigods widened.

“What did she see?” Lacy asked.

“ _He_ saw how Serapis is going to take those thrones that one of you saw him claiming.” Zia said. “Three attacks in three days’ time.”

Sapphire rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. “Oh joy,” she muttered. “A deadline. Did he see where the attacks are going to happen?”

“Uh…” Carter dug a piece of papyrus out of his bag and read off of it. Sapphire became paler as he listed locations. “The Empire State Building, DOA Recording Studios, and the Hall of Judgment. It’s a really random list.”

“ _Olympus, the Underworld,_ and the Hall of Judgment,” she corrected. “That’s hardly random.”

Anubis held up his hands in a ‘wait just one minute’ position. “Your Underworld is at a recording studio?” he asked incredulously.

“That’s just the entrance,” Ed assured him. Sapphire had started pacing back and forth behind him, tugging on her braid as she went. She was muttering to herself. I went and grabbed her arm, stopping her in her tracks. She looked at me with surprise.

“We…we have to make calls,” she stuttered. “Nico… Chiron…My father…” She shivered. “The camps won’t be able to help.”

“Six of us against an army of monsters,” Lacy said lightly “I love those odds.” Yup, those were great odds. I blinked, but Cleo jumped in before I could say anything.

“Did you say six?” she asked.

Lacy nodded. “Yeah, we should talk about that.” Someone’s stomach suddenly grumbled loudly, and I was pretty sure that it was one of the demigods’. “But can it wait till lunch?”

There was no need for any of us to answer, because at that moment Sean, who had been unnaturally quite that entire time, made a gulping sound and fainted. He fell to the floor with a thud.

Sapphire blinked. “Are we all passing out now?” she asked her friends, who shook their heads. “Oh.” Of course, she then proceeded to nearly pass out.

Never let it be said that demigods do not make things interesting.


	16. Ed XVI

Three days can go by in a flash, as they did after the magicians and demigods came up with a (mostly) solid plan. The demigods spent the time between plan inception and doomsday training in Egyptian magic, teaching the magicians to use demigod weapons, and sending a whole lot of IMs. They were in constant contact with Nico, who was essential to the plan, and Malcolm, who was making sure that they wouldn’t screw up. Out of the entire Athena Cabin, Malcolm was the best at tactics and it was really important that they got everything right. Chiron and Mr. D had to be informed of what was going on, but mostly left everything in the hands of the demigods and magicians.

Sapphire also sent IMs to her father and Apollo, but she refused to let anyone else be present when she did. “It’s better that only I get turned into a chicken if we catch them in a foul mood,” she had said. She did manage to get her father to agree, rather grudgingly she said, to their plan. Apollo had also agreed to support them and he had told some of the other gods, including Ed’s father, but they wouldn’t be able to do anything directly to help them.

Sadie had shaken her head in amazement at that. “How can your gods not interfere? Our gods love doing that.”

Walt/Anubis was the only person busier than the demigods, and Jaz and Julian, who were stocking the infirmary in preparation for the coming fight. He was traveling back and forth between Brooklyn House, the Hall of Judgment, and Camp Half-Blood so that he would be completely prepared for his very important part of the plan. Out of everyone involved, he and Nico were under the most pressure. They were literally the final line of defense for their respective underworld. If any monster got past Walt/Anubis, than they would lose the Hall of Judgement.

The Greek Underworld was better guarded, Charon was nearly impossible to get past and Cerberus didn’t like letting in living folk, but Charon wasn’t much of a fighter and Cerberus did have his unfortunate weakness for red rubber balls. Nico would be the one to make sure that nothing got a chance to get past either of them, and there was a good chance that he’d be doing that with only a skeleton army on his side. Hades would be subtly supporting him, but both the Greek and Roman demigods had too much going on to fight in skirmishes across the country.

Camp Half-Blood had gotten that monster army attack that they had been preparing for, and were now busy around the clock taking it in shifts to keep them out of camp. There seemed to be an infinite number of monsters coming after them, and Chiron and the Athena Cabin suspected that the attack was part of Serapis’ plan to take over the mythological world. Nico and Mr. D were literally the only people who could leave without getting killed. 

Of course, travelling through the Duat would have been safe too, but none of the demigods were able to do so and even if they could they wouldn’t abandon the camp.

So, Walt/Anubis was protecting the Hall of Judgement, Nico would take care of the Underworld, and that left Ed, Lacy and Sapphire to hold all of Olympus, with three magicians to help.

Piece of cake. Not.

They had lost Olympus to Kronos during the Battle of Manhattan when they had hundreds of demigods, Hunters, Party Ponies, automatons and zombies on their side, plus Hades, Persephone and Demeter. Kronos had dodged all of them and made it all the way to the throne room. If that happened with Serapis…

Then again, most of the gods would be there. Serapis couldn’t stand against the power of the Olympians, right? Ed was probably just working himself into a panic for nothing. Though if Zeus was being his regular stubborn self…

Ed sighed as he finished stowing his magician’s kit in the Duat.

“What is it?” Sapphire asked.

“I was just thinking about how totally dead we are,” Ed replied. 

Sapphire rolled her eyes at him through her skull-shaped helmet. “We just have to hold the Empire State Building. It’ll be a piece of cake.”

“They couldn’t manage it during the Titan War,” Ed pointed out. “And they had a whole army that time.”

This time Sapphire wasn’t able to hide from him the fact that she was nervous, so she just gave in and started pacing back and forth beside the sphinx statue that they would be using to portal to Manhattan.

Cleo looked at Sapphire, her own nervousness clear to everyone around them. “Are you sure that you want _me_ to come with?” she asked, tightly gripping the scroll she had with her. “Out of every magician here—”

“You’re the only one who can use a sword well enough to trick anyone into thinking you’re a demigod,” Lacy interrupted, looking up from where she was combing out the horsehair plume of her helmet. “And you’re the best at working with that.” She nodded to the scroll. “You’ll make a convincing daughter of Hecate.”

Disguising the magicians as demigods had been Malcolm’s idea. He reasoned that Serapis wouldn’t be expecting for demigods and magicians to work together, so they would be able to suitably shock the god by pretending that they were all demigods. Giving the magicians extra armour was a bonus.

“What about me?” Sadie fake pouted. “Won’t I be convincing?”

Sapphire stopped pacing and looked at her. “Your armour is crooked,” she said. Then she went back to pacing. Lacy helped Sadie adjust her armour, and Cleo looked nervously at her own armour, probably wondering if she had put it on properly. 

“Do you guys wear this stuff all the time?” Alyssa asked, walking around to try to get used to the weight of the bronze. “It’s really heavy.” Full armour was heavy, but it was just something you got used to. Ed told Alyssa this, even though he had only worn armour once. There wasn’t really a need to wear solid bronze when you had a Nemean lionskin coat.

Carter and Zia arrived just when Sapphire gave up on pacing and plopped on the ground with her forehead against her knees. Carter looked at her skeptically. “Is everything alright?”

Sapphire looked up and Carter blinked when he saw her helmet. “Just great,” she said. “We’re ready to go. We were just waiting for you.”

“Better store that, Cleo,” Lacy murmured. Cleo reluctantly pushed her scroll into the Duat.

Zia pulled Sapphire aside, probably to give her some last-minute tips about fire magic. Carter looked around at the rest of them. “I want all of you to be careful,” he said. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

Sadie waved him off. “Carter, we’ll be fine.”

“I just don’t like that only the six of you are going,” Carter said for the millionth time in the last twelve hours. “We could bring all the senior magicians.”

“But the Oracle’s prophecy was specific,” Ed retaliated. “‘Three become six’ and even six is a dangerous number for a quest.”

“This is still a quest,” Lacy said quickly, before Carter could make his standard counter argument, which was that he didn’t want to blindly trust a poem.

In retrospect dumping the prophecy on Carter and Zia right after they had gotten home might not have been the best idea. Sure, Zia had taken it in stride but Carter had become very, what was the word? Stressed. 

“Carter, we’ve done a lot of stuff more dangerous than this,” Sadie said. “Remember Montana?” 

Carter frowned, indicating that he most certainly did remember Montana. 

“Just be careful,” he said, as Zia and Sapphire came back to the group. “Please.”

“Carter, don’t worry so much,” Zia chided. “Everyone here is perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.” They all made sounds of agreement.

Carter muttered to himself, but his facial muscles relaxed slightly. Ed thought that he had been worried about his little sister going off to battle a god without him and was just now realizing that Sadie would never be completely on her own. Lacy was staying close to the magicians, Sapphire had eager shadows lapping around her, Ed was aware of everything that was going on, and they were all armed to the teeth.

“Let’s get going,” Sapphire ordered. They looked at Zia, who tilted her head and waited for a moment before going over to the stone sphinx. Raising her staff and wand she began to chant. Almost immediately a swirling portal of sand appeared above the sphinx’s head.

“Together?” Lacy asked, looking at the intimidating sandstorm.

“Together,” Sadie agreed. The three demigods joined hands with Lacy between Sapphire and Ed. The magicians looked at them a little strangely but didn’t comment. “Jump in on three. One…two…three!”

They took a running start and leapt into the portal. Ed immediately felt sand scratching at his face and screwed his eyes shut so he wouldn’t get sand in them. Screeches and ghostly chattering echoed around them and Ed was reminded if shadow travelling. He loathed shadow travelling, and he had the feeling that he didn’t like portals much more. He gripped Lacy’s hand tightly and she squeezed back. 

They fell out of the portal about twenty metres above the ground. The three demigods used their training to land without breaking any bones and the three magicians used magic to slow their fall.

“That was fun,” Sapphire said sarcastically, rubbing sand off of her arms. Ed stood up and shook drifts of sand out of his coat. He decided that travelling by portal wasn’t quite as bad as shadow travel, but it came very close.

After they had gotten cleaned up enough to pass for regular weird and not insane weird, Sadie cast glamour spells over them so that their weapons and armour would be even less noticeable. Then they left Cleopatra’s Needle and walked through Central Park and then through the streets of Manhattan until they reached the Empire State building. They stood at a spot near but not too near the main entrance and waited while Sapphire reached into her shadow and produced the map that Walt/Anubis had gotten for them from Malcolm the day before. She unfolded the paper and they all gathered around to look at it.

“Alright,” Sapphire said quietly, “we all know where we have to be. Lacy and Sadie, you’re here on the north-east side of the building. Ed and Alyssa, here, north-west side. Ed, expect that package from your father to arrive in,” she looked at his watch “five minutes. Cleo, you and I are at the front entrance. That’s probably the place that will be hit hardest.” Cleo gulped. “Leo and Apollo are providing air support, and ladies Hecate and Pheme will make sure that all the mortals are out of the line of fire. Everyone ready?”

There were nods all around. Sapphire folded up the map and put it away. “Good. I’m going to go talk to the security guard. Get into your places in one minute.” She darted inside. They all looked at each other.

“Are we actually ready for this?” Alyssa asked. “I mean, there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll be fighting a god.”

“Not like we haven’t done that before,” Sadie remarked. “We can do this.”

Ed took out his knife and tapped each magician on her shoulders. “As of now you are all honorary demigods,” he decided. “You will fight with courage, and sometimes reckless abandon, as you protect Olympus. _Ave!_ ”

“ _Ave_ ,” Lacy echoed.

A slight golden glow seemed to come from the magicians, but Ed figured that it was his eyes playing tricks on him. He looked down at his watch and took a deep breath. “It’s time.”


	17. Sapphire XVII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally written and posted when Stephen Hawking was still alive.  
> Also, there are events referenced that happened in another fic I wrote, but you don't have to read that fic to understand this one because the events boil down to "the Texas nome was destroyed again".

They didn’t have to loiter for very long, though the amount of time they were waiting would probably have gotten them escorted off the premises if the Mist and Sadie’s glamour spells hadn’t shielded them from scrutiny. Finally, the signal they were waiting for came.

“Oh my gods!” a black-haired girl shrieked. “Stephen Hawking is at the MET!” Several mortals started screaming and every person that could be seen from the front of the Empire State Building went running in the direction of Central Park. The girl, really the goddess Pheme, winked at Sapphire and Cleo. Then she ran after the crowd, herding them away from the coming fight.

Once all the mortals were gone, Sapphire knelt to the ground and placed her bare hand on the pavement. She mentally pushed and felt the energy rush out of her heart and pour through her fingers. Gold light rippled across the ground and hundreds of weeds burst out of the asphalt. Thistles, brambles and stinging nettle filled the streets and forced their way through the cracks in the sidewalks. They should have made a barrier for a least thirty metres around, something that Sapphire wouldn’t be able to accomplish normally, but this time she had a bit of extra help.

“Thank you, Mother,” she murmured when the last of the weeds had grown. “I owe you a steak.”

Cleo reached into the Duat and pulled out the scroll she had stashed there earlier. She gripped it tightly. That scroll was the scroll that Setne had used against the magicians a few years ago. Using it he had summoned four horse-shaped storm spirits which had then proceeded to destroy a good chunk of the Texas Nome. Good luck and timely protective circles were pretty much the only reasons that all the magicians there had survived. 

Every spell on the scroll was in Latin, which was used by children of Hecate and Trivia for spells that almost always required a lot of energy to cast, though somehow that rule didn’t apply to Egyptian magicians, who could cast even the most draining spells on the scroll without even tapping into their own magic reserves. At least a third of the spells on the scroll were deadly, and the rest of them could turn out extremely badly if they were done wrong. 

That was the scroll that Cleo had wanted to show the demigods. Carter had given his permission and Lacy had yelped as soon as the scroll was brought out.

“That’s the book that went missing during the war!” she had exclaimed. That explained how it had gotten into the hands of a homicidal ghost. Things that demigods loose tend to end up in the strangest places, as anyone could find out by asking Clovis to tell the story about his pillow.

Cleo had burned through enough drachmas to get an IM discount by the time Lou Ellen had finished translating every spell on the scroll and explaining what they did. She was now one of the only magicians who would touch the book of spells without an eleven foot pole, and that was why Sapphire had all but begged her to come with. Cleo’s regular magic was impressive, but with those spells at her disposal she could probably flatten all of Manhattan without breaking a sweat. That kind of firepower was exactly what they needed.

Sapphire squinted into the distance and almost missed the hellhounds that appeared right in front of her. She activated Swift Death and the katana pierced the first hellhound’s chest just as it advanced on her. The hellhound let out a yelp and it dissolved into shadows.

“The baddies are here,” she told Cleo, who was busy fending off her own hellhound with one hand.

“I never would have guessed,” the magician replied sarcastically. “Demon to your right.”

Sapphire spun and used Swift Death to catch the mace that the pink-skinned dragonfly demon was swinging at her head. She then swung her wakizashi and cut the demon in half through his bare middle. She didn’t wait for him to crumble to sand before she twisted back around to stab another demon between the eyes. Several more demons were turning tail and taking to the skies as they were attacked by the dragonlings who had been roosting on the roofs of surrounding buildings. The dragonlings were clicking happily as they gouged out the demons’ eyes.

They were absolutely adorable.

“Having fun?” Sapphire shouted to Cleo, who had retreated to the tower’s entrance and abandon use of her sword in favour of turning any monsters within range into squirrels, which actually wasn’t a lot. The main group of the attackers, who were monsters that couldn’t fly or shadow travel, were very slowly hacking their way through the barrier of weeds. They were currently too far away. 

“Of course!” Cleo shouted back as a hellhound shrank into a slightly less demonic furry package. “How do you think the others are doing?”


	18. Ed XVIII

“Ow!” Ed rubbed his head with one hand and caught the shoe-box that had fallen on it with the other. Alyssa looked at the box like she expected a snake to burst out of it.

“Is that…from your father?” she asked incredulously. Ed nodded. “I thought he was the god of messengers.”

“He is,” Ed agreed. “He’s not supposed to help us directly, so I guess he though dropping a box on my head was a good compromise.” He looked up at the sky. “Thanks, Dad.”

He opened the box and saw a bright yellow pair of Converse high-tops and the word φτερά written on the inside of the lid. He quickly pulled off the shoes he was wearing and put on the new shoes. He put his old shoes in the box and it disappeared, leaving a note in its place.

_‘Your old shoes are back at camp. Good luck, son!’_

“Thanks, Dad,” he said again, but with more sincerity than the first time. The note didn’t disappear, so he shoved it into his coat pocket.

Alyssa was now looking down at his shoes. “What do they do?”

Ed gave a small smile. “ _Fterá!_ ” he said. White feathered wings sprang from the sides of the shoes and started flapping furiously. He rose wobbly into the air and, on some instinct, leaned forwards. The mortals didn’t even blink an eye. He was propelled forwards like he was on a Segway. Taking a guess he leaned various directions and steered his flight up the side of the Empire State Building and around in a figure eight before landing back on the ground. It was just like riding a Segway, except he could go up and down as well as left and right and forwards and backwards. 

“Cool,” Alyssa said. She jerked her head to indicate the mortals around them. “What do you think they saw?”

Ed shrugged. “A flock of seagulls?” He looked around and realized that the area was emptying quickly. He drew his knives. Alyssa noticed and awkwardly drew her sword.

“They’re coming,” Ed muttered.

The last of the mortals were leaving when plants started bursting from the ground. A few of them stopped to look with obvious surprise, but then whatever spell Hecate was using on them tightened its grip and they moved on without blinking an eye.

Alyssa surveyed the ten metre wide area they had that was free of the weeds. “This is going to be hard,” she decided.

Ed nodded. He wasn’t looking at the area directly around them, he was looking over the weeds to see if he could spot any sign of monsters. He actually hoped that Sapphire was right, that the front entrance would be hit hardest, because from where he stood this side of the building, the entrance on Thirty-Fourth Street, was the weakest point. He had only a few days of Camp Half-Blood training under his belt, and Alyssa didn’t have enough space to use her earth magic effectively.

His wish was not granted.

There was a dark line of figures coming down the street. Somehow they were slicing quickly though the barrier of thorns and stomping the plants flat. They were a small group, which made Ed think that they were some sort of elite hit squad. Shouts and roars were echoing around the building and he knew that it least one of the other pairs was repelling an attack.

“Here’s trouble,” he said, pointing. “They probably have claws and some type of armour.” Alyssa nodded in understanding.

They watched the squad advance and listened to screaming demons. “This is ridiculous,” Ed finally muttered. “ _Fterá._ ” He flew carefully over the sea of weeds, ready to dodge if arrows started flying. He only got close enough to see what type of monsters the squad was, they he went flying back to the base of the Empire State Building as fast as he possibly could.

“What is it?” Alyssa asked as he fell to the ground gasping. “What are they?”

“ _Empousai_ ,” he said. “She-demons with talons and hair made of fire. They drink blood. Oh, and they have two different types of legs.”

“Is that all?” Alyssa squeaked.

“Pretty much.” He looked over at the seven _empousai_ , who had only gotten closer while they were talking. He almost wished that he had accepted that extra gun that Lacy had tried to give him, or even the antique bow that Zia had offered.

“I’m going to summon some snakes,” he decided. “Cover me.” Alyssa moved in front of him with her sword at the ready while Ed summoned his magician’s kit and pulled out paper and ink. He quickly but carefully wrote out the hieroglyphs for ‘snakes’. Concentrating on the type of snake he wanted to summon, he said the word. About twelve copperheads burst from the paper. Ed quickly hissed at them and they stopped thrashing.

~ _Thank you,_ ~ he said. Speaking Snake was really weird, but it was definitely an important skill for him to have since as a magician he only seemed able to summon snakes. Thankfully, it was something that came standard as a child of Hermes, not that they told anyone else that. ~ _My friend and I need your help. There are sandy not-friends here, and they will true-strike many walkers if they get near the Cloud-City.~_

The snakes hissed among themselves. ~ _We will help you, Fastwalker’s son.~_ one of the snakes said at last.

~ _Thank you. I will send you home when the many-strikes is over,~_ Ed said.

_~We will strike true, Fastwalker’s son.~_ The snakes all looked up at him. _~Tell us what to do.~_ When he had given them instructions the snakes slithered away through the weeds.

“That is so weird,” Alyssa said after Ed had put his kit away.

He shrugged. “I talk to snakes, you sink people in quicksand. To-may-to, to-ma-to.”

They waited for a little longer. Soon they heard screams coming from the _empousai_ and there was more monster dust added to the air as two of them crumbled to dust.

“Fun,” Alyssa said as they watched the remaining _empousai_ try to fight off the relentless venomous snakes. The sounds of battle from the front of the Empire state building grew louder. “I wonder how the others are doing.”


	19. Lacy XIX

Everything was quiet for them for about five minutes after the weeds grew. Lacy could hear yells coming from the front of the building and howls that could only be dying hellhounds, but she and Sadie didn’t have anything to do.

“Nothing’s happening,” Sadie eventually said. “Should we go help Cleo and Sapphire?”

Lacy spun her pistol around in her hand. “No. We can’t leave any entrance undefended.”

“There’s nothing to defend against,” Sadie pointed out.

Lacy looked at her friend, who was tapping the butt of her spear against the ground in a very ADHD demigod-like manner. “Don’t count chick—Giants!”

“What?”

Lacy pointed to the movement that she had spotted out of the corner of her eye. Sadie’s gaze followed her finger and landed on the group of Lastrygonian giants that was headed towards them. “Ah,” she said. “Are those the, uh, _cannibal_ giants you were telling me and Jaz about?” Lacy nodded. “Wonderful.”

They both looked at the giants with clear worry. Lacy started to line up a shot with her gun, but lowered it when she realized that they were out of range. Sadie gripped her spear tightly and was clearly wishing that it was her staff. Meanwhile, the Lastrygonians continued to advance. They didn’t seem to be having any trouble with the thorny weeds, just tramping through them and letting the spikes snap against their thick skin, or swinging their clubs and squishing the plants flat. Lacy hoped that there weren’t any Lastrygonians at the main entrance because it sounded like Sapphire and Cleo were having enough trouble already.

She and Sadie were definitely in trouble. Her chain whip would probably work fine, and her gun, but Sadie would have a lot of trouble fending off a monster three times her size with just a spear. They didn’t even know how many of them there were!

Lacy squinted and craned her neck. She counted at least ten of the tattooed giants, none of whom seemed to be carrying the Celestial Bronze cannonballs that the Lastrygonians liked using in conjunction with fire, most of whom were carrying clubs. That was one good thing anyway. They only had to worry about getting squashed flat, not getting squashed flat and burned to death.

She raised her gun again, getting ready to take a shot at the giants as soon as they were in range, but then she blinked with surprise when one of the giants at the front of the pack turned around with a roar and swung his club wildly. Another giant lashed out with his club, and then another. Soon all of the giants were fighting, seemingly among themselves.

“What are they doing?” Sadie asked with astonishment.

Lacy shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

When the first giant exploded into yellow dust, Lacy saw a silver missile cut through the space where it had been and continue flying directly towards her and Sadie. “Duck!” They hit the dirt just in time for the arrow to fly over their heads and embed itself in the door that they were guarding, shaft quivering.

“It’s the Hunters of Artemis,” Lacy told Sadie as another giant turned to dust. “A group of girls who run around the continent hunting monsters. My mother doesn’t like them much.”

Sadie flinched as another arrow flew over their heads. “Let me guess, Artemis leads them?”

“Yup.” Yet another arrow missed its target and almost hit Lacy when she went to stand up. She hit the ground again and decided that it would probably just be safer to stay down. “They don’t normally miss. They must have new recruit.”

Once all of the former Lastrygonians had been blown away, Lacy and Sadie decided that it was probably safe to stand up. They did so carefully and weren’t surprised to see two silver camouflage-clad girls making their way towards them. The wilderness savvy Hunters didn’t have much trouble navigating the thorny barrier, though quite a bit of it had already been broken down by the giants. The shorter, auburn-haired girl did seem to be leading the black-haired girl around what obstacles were standing, but they still made getting through the barrier look easy.

“Well,” Sadie said when they arrived “that was really impressive.”

The auburn-haired girl smiled. “Thank you, Sadie Kane. My hunters have surrounded the perimeter, so you should have fewer monsters to deal with from now on.”

Lacy’s eyes widened and she dropped into an awkward curtsy. Awkward because she wasn’t wearing a skirt and because Artemis wasn’t a goddess that one would usually think to curtsy to. “Lady Artemis. It’s an honour.” Sadie realized who was standing in front of them and quickly bowed.

Artemis rolled her eyes. “Please stand up girls.”

They obeyed. Lacy looked at the girl standing next to Artemis and blinked in surprise. The girl was not Thaila Grace, as her black hair and the band of silver on her head had seemed to indicate, but a completely different Hunter who Lacy had never seen before. She knew that because this girl was wearing a metal blindfold armour _thing_ that clashed horribly with her urban camo T-shirt. She would have remembered someone who wore that.

Artemis noticed Lacy staring in horror at the fashion faux pas and frowned. “Daughter of Aphrodite…” she said in clear warning. Lacy quickly averted her eyes and looked instead towards the street, where a trail of poison seemed to be flowing, turning all the weeds in its path to ashes.

“Lady Artemis, Sadie…” she pointed towards the oncoming disturbance just in time for them to see a red-crested snake head pop out from behind a bunch of nettles. The basilisk raised its collar of white spikes and touched the nettles, which immediately withered.

“Eleven o’clock, Elizabeth,” Artemis told the previously unnamed Hunter. Elizabeth put an arrow to the string of her bow, turned so that she was facing the basilisk, and quickly fired. Her arrow hit the basilisk’s head and they could all hear it hissing angrily as it crumbled.

“Very good, Elizabeth,” Artemis acknowledged. “That was right between its eyes.”

Elizabeth smiled. “Thank you my lady.” 

“Hate to break this up,” Sadie interrupted “but there are more.” She was tracking the paths of the remaining basilisks with her eyes and Lacy noted that they were getting really close really quickly. She tightened her grip on her gun and drew one of her knives, which would work better against the small monsters than her chain whip.

“We can take them,” she said confidently.

Artemis nodded in agreement. “I just hope that your other friends are having better luck than you,” the goddess commented.

Sadie grimaced. “Me too.” 


	20. Interlude: The Underworlds

W **A**

A **N**

L **U**

T **B**

**I**

**S**

Volunteering to guard the Hall of Judgment on our own was a horrible idea—

**We were in total agreement about that.**

—but, as it turned out, we didn’t end up being on our own after all. When we got to the entrance to the Hall of Judgment we found a whole army waiting for us, led by our favourite god of dwarfs.

**Bes walked up to us in his usual battle-ready outfit, a Speedo. “You’re late kids.” he announced.**

**We smiled just a little at his affronted tone.** **“We didn’t know you’d be coming.” We looked around at Bes’ army. The old gods from the House of Rest had come to the rescue again and there were now enough fighters to protect the Hall of Judgement without any trouble. There was one god that we expected to see who wasn’t there though.**

“Where’s Taweret?” I asked, as Anubis didn’t seem to want to.

Bes blushed and twisted his wedding ring around on his finger. “She, ah, stayed at home.”

“Why?”

Bes turned ever redder. “She’s pregnant.”

Our eyes widened. “Bes, congratulations! You’re going to be a father!” 

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Are we gonna get ready to fight or just stand here talking until we get eaten?”

We laughed. Then we turned our back on the doors of the Hall and fixed our gaze upriver. With our staff and wand at the ready we prepared to fight alongside some of the best gods we have ever known.

**Do I have to say that everything went well?**

Yes you do.

**Alright then. Everything went perfectly fine, except for that run-in with a Greek basilisk that no one is to ever talk about.**

Agreed.

* * *

_Nico’s POV_

Nico swore to himself that if he made it through the battle alive he would never tell anyone the lengths he had to go to in order to completely protect the Underworld. There was bribing Charon to not take any monsters over on the ferry, asking his father to loan him a little extra firepower, begging the Hunters, and when they refused the Amazons, to keep an eye on the other Underworld entrances just in case Serapis tried to get through a back door, and trying to train Cerberus to recognize and attack various monsters in less than three days. 

Spoiler alert, it hadn’t happened.

So, he was prepared, but for a while when he was loitering outside DOA he thought that all his preparation had been for nothing. It was only for a little while though, and then everything went crazy. Unlike his sister and her friends, Nico didn’t have any god or goddess to clear the street of mortals for him, so when the monsters arrived so did the panic. People were running all over the place screaming about whatever it was they saw through the Mist and there was a huge risk that they’d get eaten or trampled underfoot.

The monsters, by the way, were two dragons. With spikes on the ends of their tails. And really sharp teeth.

Nico didn’t have room to swing his sword with all of the mortals around so he drove it into the ground and opened up a crevice in front of the recording studio. About a hundred skeleton warriors climbed out of the earth and lined up, waiting for his orders.

“Protect the mortals,” he told them “Get them to safety, and then come back to kill the dragons.” The dead warriors nodded and went to work.

While the skeletons were making sure that there weren’t any human casualties, Nico went to the side of the building and wheeled an old-fashioned cannon out into the light. He then dragged the bag of Stygian Iron cannonballs out and placed them beside the cannon. Just as he’d practiced, he loaded the cannon and aimed it at the larger of the two dragons, which was still stuck in the middle of the street, swiping at mortals. Smoke was rising from its nostrils and Nico had the bad feeling that it was about to breath fire.

He took out a lighter and lit the powder at his end of the cannon. He then ducked behind a handy half wall and listened as the cannon fired. The dragon let out a roar. He looked over the wall and saw that the cannonball had hit it directly in its chest. Green blood was leaking from the hole. Nico grinned. It had been very lucky that Hades had agreed to let him use the cannon.

He got out from behind the wall and prepared to fire again.


	21. Sapphire XXI

Here’s a little known fact: Continually fighting monsters for more than three hours straight is _tiring_. Sure some people get an insane battle high ( _cough_ Sapphire _cough_ ) but that doesn’t mean that they don’t get worn out. She wasn’t wearing a watch, but Sapphire heard a clock somewhere chime noon at around the time she almost got speared by a _retiarius dracanae_ who was thankfully far-sighted. All Sapphire had to do was knock the snake-woman’s glasses off her face and stay close enough that she couldn’t be properly seen. Then it was just a matter of doing a little neck chopping and ta da, Sapphire 50-something, Monsters 0.

Cleo was still shooting out spells as fast as a child of Apollo (who wasn’t Will) could shoot arrows. She was taking care of all the hellhounds that were still showing up and the _dracanae_ that threatened to stab Sapphire in the back. Thanks to her efforts the ground was littered with stuffed animals and snakeskin purses. The animals that she had turned some monsters into, squirrels, seagulls, pigeons and the like, had all run away as best they could. She managed all that without even breaking into a sweat.

Sapphire on the other hand could have created a new ocean with how much she was perspiring.

Most of the dragonlings were gone. They had chased away all the Egyptian demons, scratching at their eyes and spitting acid in their faces, but a lot of them had gotten damaged in the process. Sapphire had ordered them to go back to camp and the few that wouldn’t were stuck high up on the Empire State Building as backup backup. Their air support was now coming in a drizzle of golden arrows that thinned out the army of monsters nicely.

Sapphire was not going to be eating when this was over because she was going to have to sacrifice her food to five gods. Actually, make that six gods. There was too much craziness going on for Zeus to actually ignore it. By now he had to be just pretending to ignore the army of monsters trying to get into Olympus and the suspicious lack of mortal interference. 

One of the golden arrows which were certainly _not_ Apollo’s passed through the throat of a _dracanae_ that was about to throw her spear at Cleo. The snake-woman crumbled to dust, which blew in the eyes of some of her comrades and allowed Sapphire to stab _them_ from behind.

“I think there are less of them,” Cleo croaked to Sapphire encouragingly. Sapphire gave the other girl a quick smile, which probably looked more like a grimace, before jumping back into the fray.

There _were_ fewer monsters than before, Cleo could take most of the credit for that, and there didn’t seem to be any reinforcements coming for the monsters’ side. The monsters that were left though seemed to be faster and stronger than all of the other ones Sapphire had faced so far, or maybe she was just tired. Whichever it was, her movements were slower, her strikes didn’t have enough power, and she seemed to be on the defensive more than the offensive.

She yelped in pain as one point of a trident pierced her shoulder. She swung the arm that was not jammed by the trident and sliced off the arm of the snake-woman who had attacked her. The snake-woman hissed in pain and anger as her arm fell to the ground and burst into dust.

“You will pay for thiss daughter of Hadess!” She swung the weighted net of chains that she held in her remaining hand. Sapphire stepped back…right into the arms of the _dracanae_ that had been standing behind her. She gulped as the second snake woman put her knife to her throat, drew up all her strength, and sent the two monsters flying into the air using some of the nearby shadows. The snake-women shouted in alarm before being killed by two gold arrows. There was that problem solved, except now Sapphire was twice as tired as she was before and she had a two metre long Celestial Bronze trident hanging from her shoulder.

It was unwieldy and painful, and it had to go. 

Cleo seemed to have realized what had happened, as the monsters near Sapphire turned into purses. Sapphire gritted her teeth and yanked the trident out of her left shoulder. She hurled the weapon points first at the hellhound that was running towards her and somehow she actually managed to hit it. The tank-sized demon dog melted in shadows.

And back to fighting _dracanae._ There were actually only four of them left but they were all trying their hardest to slip past her and get to the doors. Sapphire didn’t know why, their army was gone and they wouldn’t last five minutes against Cleo, but they kept pressing on. It was bad for her because her injury from the trident had made it nigh impossible to raise her arm, so she had to use one katana against four monsters that all wanted to kill her. 

“A little help would be nice,” she murmured. _Say ‘please_ ’, her mum’s voice reminded her. “Please.” The snake-woman to her left turned into a large leather-covered book with metal pages. Cleo was probably getting tired. The _dracanae_ to her right became the proud owner of an arrow in her eye and exploded with joy. That left two of the monsters for her to deal with.

She shifted her stance and raised Swift Death. “Who’s first?” she asked with a smile. Her question was answered when _both_ of the snake-women came charging at her with all the speed of an angered bull. She had to choose which one to kill, and she picked the one with a spear pointed right at her heart.

A good choice, considering the circumstances.

She swung her katana and cut through the shaft of the spear. She dodged out of the way of the trident, ugh, trident, that came towards her knee from the other snake-woman and then cut through the scaly waist of the unarmed _dracanae_ , killing her instantly. As Swift Death absorbed the essence of the monster Sapphire made an executive decision. Her wakizashi was just weighing her down at this point, and she would take more maneuverability over carrying a useless weapon. She backed away from the final monster as fast as she could, twisting the skull on the end of Swift Death as she went. Swift Death shrank back into her ring and her wakizashi disappeared.

The _dracanae_ half slithered, half ran towards her just as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a metal Zippo lighter. She opened the lighter and flicked the thumbwheel twice in rapid succession. The lighter turned into a Celestial Bronze sword with flames covering the blade. The _dracanae_ had just enough time to think that maybe running into the end of a flaming sword blade was a bad idea before the sword pierced her armour and set her alight.

Sapphire pulled Flamma out of the chest of the dying snake-woman with a sigh. She looked around to see if there were any more monsters, and when she realized that she had killed the last one she tottered over to the entrance of the Empire State Building and leaned against one of the black pillars that flanked the doors. 

“Well,” Cleo croaked with her dry throat “that was a thing.” 

“Yeah,” Sapphire agreed hoarsely. She reached into her other pocket and took out a bag of extremely squished ambrosia. She scooped up a bit of the paste with her finger and popped it into her mouth.

Cleo watched enviously as Sapphire’s wounds began to heal. “I really wish we could use that.” None of the magicians had tried nectar or ambrosia, mostly because none of them felt like painfully burning up if it turned out that they couldn’t eat it. Apparently most healing potions tasted awful, like ‘the-cat-pulled-this-out-of-the-garbage’ awful, so Sapphire could see why Cleo would prefer godly food if only she could eat it without perishing. 

Sapphire ate a little more ambrosia and let out a slow breath as her shoulder healed completely. It would still be better not to use her left arm if she could help it, but it wouldn’t give out completely if she had to use it. It would have been great if eating ambrosia could have healed the wounds on her back at the beginning of the summer, but apparently it didn’t work that well on gashes down to the bone that were caused by superheated Celestial Bronze. Go figure. 

Cleo reached into the Duat and pulled out a bottle of water. “Do you think that’s it?” she asked after she had swallowed half the bottle. Sapphire shrugged. On cue a high-pitched shriek sounded. Both of them jumped and looked around.

“For us maybe,” Sapphire replied when they saw that there weren’t any monsters coming for them. “We still shouldn’t leave the doors.”

Cleo nodded. Then she looked curiously at Sapphire’s sword, which was leaning against the building. Her eyes widened. “Sapphire, you’re burning the Empire State Building!”

Sapphire looked at her sword and realized yes, the flames on its blade were scorching the building. “Schist!” She put away the bag of ambrosia and snatched up her sword. She really had to be more careful where she put it down. It would just be embarrassing if they burnt down the building while trying to protect it from monsters.

Cleo at least managed to finish drinking her water before the Fates decided to throw them a curveball. A black doorway opened up in the air above one of the piles of weeds that the _dracanae_ had created while they were advancing on the building. A rumpled-looking, scrawny man stumbled out and fell face first into the thorny stems. “Ack!” he exclaimed.

Sapphire and Cleo looked at each other, stood up straight, and simultaneously raised their swords. “Are you alright?” Sapphire called to the man, who was standing up and dusting himself off. The man automatically looked in the direction of the voice he heard and Sapphire immediately let out a barely audible yelp. ‘Barely audible’ because her throat had started to close up the moment she had seen the man’s face.

He wasn’t a man, he was a god.

He wasn’t just a god, he was Serapis. 

He was Searpis, marching towards them with a scowl on his face and a large, evil-looking sword strapped to his back.

“Holy Horus,” Cleo muttered, obviously recognizing the god from Sapphire’s description of him in her dream. Sapphire would have to disagree. Meeting Horus would be a lot less scary.

Serapis marched right up to them and stared at Sapphire. Sapphire tried to shove her fear aside and gave him her best child of Hades glare. Serapis was not as well-dressed as he had been in her dream. He looked a bit like a stereotypical homeless person except for his immaculately waxed hair.

Oh, and the sword strapped to his back. Can’t forget about that. 

“I offered you everything, and this is how you repay me?” Serapis asked, sounding completely heartbroken. Sapphire began to feel sorry for him, but Cleo’s swift kick to her ankle snapped her out of it. She hypothesized that Serapis was using some type of Egyptian magic to try to sway them to his side and Cleo had been able to sense it.

“You offered me a chance to kill a bunch of people,” she shot back.

“Don’t you want that; a chance to punish everyone who has hurt you, to be the queen of a better world?” The words worked their way through Sapphire’s mind and she almost began to nod.

“No!” Cleo shouted. “She doesn’t!”

Serapis’ eyes drifted lazily towards her. “Magician,” he scoffed “let the daughter of Hades speak for herself.” So, he wasn’t fooled in the least by Cleo’s demigod disguise. Oh well, at least it had worked on the monsters.

Sapphire pointed her sword at the god. “I like this world just fine, thanks.”

“Pity,” Serapis said. “I don’t suppose you would step out of my way and let me have Olympus? Of course, I would still make you my queen.”

Sapphire practically growled. “Over my dead body.” 

Serapis frowned sadly. He drew his sword, which glinted a sickly yellow. “Then, girls, prepare to die.”

The sword jabbed forwards, the point aimed at Sapphire’s heart. He was moving too fast for her to deflect the sword somewhere harmless and she was too tired to shadow travel out of danger. Sapphire just hoped that, since the god had apparently decided to kill them one at a time, Cleo would be able to get away. It came as a total surprise when Cleo dropped her sword and lunged sideways, pushing her mostly out of the path of the sword. Each of them took half of the strike and Sapphire felt her ribs burning where the sword had sliced her skin. Cleo yelled in pain and clasped her free hand to the cut on her right hip. The sword had to be poisoned; both cuts were shallow and wouldn’t have hurt so much if the blade wasn’t anointed.

“You had to make it difficult,” Serapis chided. He raised his sword for another strike, the blow that would surely kill them both.

The sound of an arrow being released from a bow rang loudly in Sapphire’s ears. Serapis staggered forwards and then spun around, the arrow in his back glinting as he faced his new foe.


	22. Tri-mythology Rumble

S

A

D

I

E

So, you probably want to know how I feel about basilisks after facing half a dozen of them with a demigod, a blind Huntress, and a goddess on my side.

I never want to see any basilisks again. Period. End of story.

Moving on.

It was about an hour after the last had basilisk died and crumbled into that sulphur yellow dust that Greco-Roman monsters tend to turn into. I was on my way to becoming bored again, but I didn’t mention it because I didn’t feel like tangling with more insane non-Egyptian monsters. According to Lacy the monsters we had faced so far were only _some_ of the worst. I didn’t want to meet any more of them.

It was quiet, except for the sound of birds shrieking. Lacy and Elizabeth were having a one-sided argument about whether being a Hunter of Artemis was better than being ‘normal’ when Artemis took off running towards the front of the Empire State Building without a word of warning. Neither of them seemed to notice. 

“Uh, girls, our goddess just deserted us,” I pointed out

“What?” Elizabeth asked, interrupting Lacy’s argument.

“Artemis just left,” I said. “She went around the front.”

Elizabeth grabbed Lacy’s arm and got her to lead her to the front of the building. I followed them after activating a few warrior shabti I pulled out of the Duat to continue guarding our entrance. Hey, a goddess had just shot out of there like she had a superzombie army after her. Something important, or dangerous, or both was obviously happening.

By the time we reached the main entrance, Artemis was already engaged in a fierce battle, hunting knives against swords, with two heavily armoured men, one in Egyptian armour and one in Greek armour like what we were wearing. She was just barely holding her own and I knew right away that the two men were gods. It was only when they looked up at our approach that I realized that they were the _same_ god, unless Serapis had a twin brother, which I highly doubted.

Behind the two fighting gods, Cleo and Sapphire were lying in a crumpled pile by the doors. Cleo’s sword was a metre away from her and the sword the Sapphire was holding was burning the pavement.

“Elizabeth, Lacy, go help your friends!” Artemis shouted when she saw us. “Sadie Kane, I need your help!” As she spoke she dodged a sword swing from Egyptian Serapis and stabbed Greek Serapis in his arm.

“You heard her,” Lacy muttered. “Come on!” She and Elizabeth hurried towards Cleo and Sapphire while I discarded my spear and took out my wand and staff. If I had to fight a god I was going to do it the best way I could, with Egyptian magic.

Both forms of Serapis laughed when they saw me preparing to join the fight. “Foolish girls,” they said “you only delay the inevitable. I am stronger than you could ever hope to be! You will not defeat me!”

“If you’re so strong, why do you look like you’ve been living in the subway tunnels?” I asked. The clothes that both forms of Serapis were wearing were a horrible mess, and their armour looked like it had been rusting in a sewer. Serapis bristled at the insult.

“Why you—” Egyptian Serapis started.

I didn’t give him time to finish. “ _Hu-Ai_ ,” I said, pointing my wand at him. As he tried to run towards me, brandishing his sword, Egyptian Serapis seemed to slip and fell backwards, hitting his head on the sidewalk. He was completely dazed and Artemis took the chance to stab him in the throat.

“He’s a god,” she said when she saw my look of extreme shock. Then she raised her knives to block a blow from Greek Serapis.

Right, he was a god so in the end the copious amount of golden blood spilling from his body wouldn’t matter in the least. That didn’t mean that it wasn’t scary to watch. When Egyptian Serapis stood up with blood still pouring from his mangled throat and came running towards me that was even scarier.

“Shouldn’t you be dead?!” I exclaimed as I summoned a burst of wind to blow him off course. It did work, but I think I may have broken a few windows in the process.

Egyptian Serapis stumbled sideways and huffed once he’d gotten his balance back. When he spoke blood bubbled out of the hole in his throat. “You know who I am, Sadie Kane. As old Geryon would tell you, three hearts is the perfect back up system.”

“Who?” I asked.

Serapis didn’t answer. Instead he used that knock-back spell Julian likes and sent me flying backwards into a lamppost. I don’t think he put as much power into it as Julian usually does because when my head hit the lamppost I only ended up having triple-vision, not having my skull smashed in.

Egyptian Serapis walked towards me with a frown on his face. The three images I saw of him raised their swords, probably intending to strike my head off, but then they turned around when Artemis shot several arrows into their arm.

Something clicked. Serapis had three forms, Greek, Egyptian and Roman. He said that having three hearts would stop him from dying in either of his forms, so we had to kill all of him in order for him to die.

It makes more sense after being it hit the head.

I shakily rose to my feet. Artemis had sliced through the spine of Egyptian Serapis, causing him to crumble to the ground, unable to use his legs. “Artemis, can you change to your Roman form?” I asked quickly.

“Yes,” she replied as she kicked Egyptian Serapis’ sword out of his reach. “Why?”

“ _Tas!”_ Behind her, Greek Serapis was trapped in the rope that I had prepared when I noticed him sneaking up on the goddess. “We have to force him to show his Roman form.”

“Ah!” Artemis’ eyes brightened in understanding. In a flash the kid goddess changed into a twenty-year-old woman who was wielding two silver swords rather than hunting knives. She stabbed through Greek Serapis’ heart just as his form flickered.

Roman Serapis peeled away from Greek Serapis. He unsheathed his sword and engaged Artemis (no, wait, what’s her Roman name?), engaged Diana in battled. While Diana was busy thrashing the other god in a one-on-one battle, I kept Greek Serapis and Egyptian Serapis busy by setting a lioness on them and blasting them in the face with fire.

Mean? Maybe a little, but he was trying to take over the world and destroy all the other gods.

Roman Serapis didn’t stand a chance against Diana. About ten seconds after they started fighting, Roman Serapis was on the ground with his own sword through his heart. All three forms of Serapis writhed horribly while Diana snapped her fingers and turned them into cadged rabbits that for some reason had antlers.

“You did well, Sadie Kane,” she said.

“Thank you ,uh, Lady Diana.”

The Roman goddess gave a cold smile before changing back to her Greek form. “You’re welcome, Sadie.” 

Just as an aside, I vastly prefer Artemis over Diana. Artemis is a lot nicer.

“My lady!” Elizabeth called from the doors. Artemis and I both hurried over, Artemis dragging the cages of antlered rabbits behind her using lengths of silver wire, me with my staff and wand clutched in my hand.

“Oh dear,” Artemis said when she saw Cleo and Sapphire. Cleo was sweating a lot and the whites of her eyes were tinged yellow. There was a cut on her hip that had been smeared with some sort of green balm. Sapphire didn’t look much better. Her flaming sword was gone and her armour had been removed to reveal a three inch gash along her ribs that had yellow veins branching off of it. Lacy had dabbed the same green balm that she used on Cleo on Sapphire’s wound, but it didn’t actually seem to be doing anything.

“What happened?” I asked. Lacy just growled. 

“Serapis’ stupid sword was poisoned,” Sapphire explained in a tight voice. Lacy tightened her grip around the jar of balm and I thought that she might just smash it into the ground. I somehow managed to take the jar from her and read the label on it. It was supposed to draw out poisons, but it obviously wasn’t working.

“Nothing we try is working,” Lacy snarled.

“Maybe the poison is Greek or Roman in origin?” Cleo suggested. “Everything you’ve tried is Egyptian.”

“You are correct, Cleo,” Artemis said. All of us looked at her. Even Elizabeth turned her face towards the goddess. “The poison is from Tartarus.”

“Can you heal them, my lady?” Elizabeth asked.

“I cannot,” Artemis said sadly. “My brother might, but he will already be on thin ice with our father for helping you here.”

“You can’t just let them die!” Lacy shouted.

Artemis glared at her. “Did I say I would let them die?” Lacy blanched at the goddess tone but didn’t apologize.

“I will send you to Camp Half-Blood.” Artemis decided. “All of you. You will get help there.”

Sapphire bowed her head slightly. “Thank you, Lady Artemis.” She looked towards Elizabeth, who had tears running out from under her blindfold. “Congratulations again, on becoming a Hunter.”

“You’d better live, Saph,” Elizabeth replied fiercely. “Both of you.”

“We’ll try,” Cleo said with a pained smile.

I knelt down and took her hand. “You will,” I promised

Artemis waved her hand and we were suddenly enveloped in sliver mist. We began spinning, faster and faster and faster…


	23. Will XXIII

The monster army that had been attacking Camp Half-Blood for the last three days had retreated. Everyone who knew about the group of demigods and magicians who were guarding Olympus suspected that the monsters had gone to provide back-up for the (hopefully loosing) attackers.

The infirmary was just starting to clear out when four people dropped from the ceiling and landed lightly on the floor near the door. Will wouldn’t even have noticed their arrival were it not for the shriek that Leila let out. He turned quickly and saw Sapphire lying on the floor with Lacy crouching beside her. Two other girls, the first wearing glasses and the second with streaks of blue in her hair, were occupying similar positions to their left. Everyone in the infirmary was stunned at the sudden appearance, but one shout from him had all of them going back to work.

“What happened?” Leila asked, her hands fluttering helplessly. The daughter of Nyx was a good medic, but not when it was her friends that were hurt. It was a sizable weakness that she had yet to overcome.

“Poison,” Lacy snapped. “Where’s Will?” She knew as well as Will did that Leila would be useless at the moment.

“Here,” Will called as he made his way to the front of the infirmary. “What type of poison?”

“Something from Tartarus,” Lacy said quickly. “Artemis wasn’t exactly specific.”

Will didn’t bother asking when Artemis had talked to them. He called his brother, Austin, and once they had done a quick examination they moved Sapphire and the other wounded girl to two free beds with Lacy’s help.

“I can walk,” Sapphire complained hoarsely. “Cleo is worse than me. I had ambrosia.”

“Why didn’t she?” Austin asked, confused.

“Because she’s a magician,” the blue-haired girl said. Austin nodded in understanding.

Cleo muttered something deliriously. Kayla motioned for Austin to switch places with her and she began working on healing the magician.

“Shirt off,” Will ordered Sapphire.

“I have a boyfriend you know?” Sapphire joked as she complied. Will clenched his jaw when he saw the thick yellow veins branching off from the gash along her ribs. How could Cleo not already be dead if the poison was this effective against a demigod who had eaten ambrosia? He studied the wound more closely and realized that the pearlescent green ooze that he had taken to be from the poison was actually a healing paste that was working to weaken the effects of the poison.

“What is this?” he asked a second before Kayla did the same. “The paste,” he elaborated. He looked at Lacy and the blue-haired girl.

“Jaz’s healing balm,” the blue-haired girl replied. “It’s supposed to draw out poisons, but it’s not working.”

“It’s working.” Kayla corrected her. “Just not well.” She studied Cleo’s wound again and then went over to a storage cupboard. She came back with two jars and a hypodermic needle. She made to toss on of the jars to Will but quickly decided that that would be a bad idea and walked over to hand it to him. Will tried not to roll his eyes. Just because he couldn’t shoot an arrow, or any other sort of missile weapon, straight didn’t mean that he couldn’t catch. The two weren’t mutually exclusive.

“Good idea, Kayla,” he said when he saw, or rather felt what was in the jar. The water from the Phlegethon would, in working with the healing blame, burn out the poison and heal the wounds, all without causing either of the girls to burn up.

“I do have them occasionally, Mr. Doctor-in-charge,” Kayla said smugly. “You’re not the only one with Dad’s blessing.”

While Will went to work on injecting the fire water into the area around Sapphire’s wound, Kayla quickly began to explain to the blue-haired girl what she would be doing. The blue-haired girl waved her off. “Just do what you have to so that she doesn’t die.”

“Sadie, she’s not going to die,” Lacy told her. “Kayla’s a daughter of Apollo.”

“The guy with the arrows?” Several people who had their hands free, including Lacy and Sapphire, faceplamed. Sapphire yelped in pain afterwards.

Cleo was beginning to look better when two more people burst through the door. Ed and another magician girl were stuck full of metallic feathers and panting heavily. “We ended up on Half-Blood Hill,” Ed explained to Leila, who had started fussing over them the second they entered the infirmary. “No clue how we got there. Are the others here?” Leila replied that yes they were and then she dragged Ed and the girl away from the entrance so that they could get their own wounds taken care of.

Soon after, Cleo and Sapphire were both completely healed. No one else came bursting into the infirmary and Will foolishly began to relax.

He forgot about four people who were going to be mad at him when they found out that the quest group was in the infirmary and no one had told them. Cue the entrance of a monster-dust covered Nico di Angelo, Leo on flames Valdez, Mike Morgan with a training sword, and Rosalind the flower nymph of Cabin Twenty-two.

In other words, one of the scariest groups of people anyone could ever meet.

“Will Robert Solace!” Nico shouted. He marched towards Will and everyone in the infirmary, mostly healers at this point, quickly got out of his way. The rest of the group trailed behind him, though Mike broke off to check on Ed.

“Will. Robert. Solace,” Nico repeated, jabbing his pointer finger at Will with every word. “Did I or did I not tell you to let me know right away if my sister ended up in the infirmary?” 

“Hi Nico. It’s nice to see you too. I see you didn’t get torn to pieces by whatever horrible monster Serapis called up to attack the Underworld,” Will replied sarcastically. “Do you remember how you were just in L.A. fighting a battle, and I was patching up Sapphire after her battle? How am I supposed to contact you when we both have our hands full?”

“You _could_ have at _least_ sent _someone_ to _tell_ us,” Rosalind pointed out. “We _had_ to find out from _Cora_ of _all people_.”

Will flinched. “Sorry. I was a little preoccupied.”

“ _That’s_ no _excuse_ ,” Rosalind insisted.

Will resisted the urge to sigh, knowing that that would probably just get him a bed full of thorns that night. He was fortunate enough to avoid a confrontation with the Human Torch and that was only because Kayla dumped a glass of water on him and told him to leave so that he wouldn’t set the building on fire. He would have to remember to thank his sister for that later. 

By the time Nico and Rosalind had finished taking turns yelling at him and he’d whipped out the phrase “Doctor’s orders” to get Nico to sit down for a quick check-up the infirmary had emptied. Everyone who’d been getting patched up when the quest group dropped from the ceiling had been well enough to leave. Sapphire had left with Leo, the three magicians were being shown around camp by Ed, Mike and Lacy, and Leila had left with Rosalind muttering something about naiads and canoes.

“So, are you still mad at me?” Will asked Nico, who shrugged.

“Not as much as I was. You tell me when Sapphire’s in the infirmary, okay? This,” he pointed to the angel wings tattoo on the back of his neck, “does not help stop me from worrying when all I can do is smell blood.”

“Noted.” Will looked at the clock on the wall above the door. “Two hours until dinner.” He glared at Nico with glee. “Since the fate of the world no longer hangs in the balance maybe not we can have that _talk_ about how you’re dating my little sister.”

Nico gulped.

* * *

At dinner, Will was surprised to see Sapphire put actual meat on her plate but managed to avoid choking on his own food because she put all of it into the fire. He wasn’t surprised to see the three magicians sitting at the Hermes table with Ed protecting them from his siblings. He was surprised again when Leo tossed a fireball at Sapphire and she caught it and threw it back at him. The continued playing catch with the fire until Mr. D snapped at them to stop. The Aphrodite table was tittering enthusiastically as Lacy showed her siblings how she could control water and Percy was jokingly challenging her to a water-bending competition. There were small fiery explosions and miniature landslides coming from the Hecate table as they tried to do Egyptian magic.

All in all, an average Camp Half-Blood dinner.

“Attention campers!” Chiron called at the end of the meal. “Before we move to the campfire I would like to draw your attention to our guests. Girls, if you would please stand.” The magicians at the Hermes table stood. Drew glared at Sadie but the other demigods waited to hear what else Chiron had to say.

“These are three of the Egyptian magicians from Brooklyn House, Sadie Kane, Cleo Gomes and Alyssa Morgan. They will be staying with us for a few days until we are able to arrange transport home for them. Be welcoming and treat them as you would any other camper.” Chiron’s eyes wandered towards the Ares table. Clarisse nodded at him, indicating that she would keep her siblings under control. Chiron eyed a few other troublemakers before indicating that Sadie, Cleo and Alyssa could sit down. 

Percy and Annabeth started clapping and the rest of the campers followed them in a short applause. The dining pavilion then gained a lot of stumbling blocks as everyone left to get ready for the campfire. Will’s siblings gathered guitars, hand drums and lyres in preparation for the sing-along. None of them would even let him touch a lyre string. Sure he was completely tone-deaf but he couldn’t transfer that to instruments, right?

Stranger things had happened.

They went in a slightly subdued manner to the campfire. No one had forgotten the disaster at Camp Jupiter. Lots of their siblings were still in California helping with the wounded and plenty of the Ares kids were there helping to dig people out of rubble. This was reflected in the campfire, which was a melancholy blue.

“Can we start with _Highway Of Heroes_?” one of Will’s Canadian siblings asked in a whisper.

“Do you want to make this worse?” Austin hissed. 

Their brother flinched. “It was just an idea.”

Before an argument could break out over what song they would sing first one of the Stoll brothers let out a shout. “What the Hades?!”

“Again with dad’s name.” Will heard Nico mutter. Everyone looked in the direction that the Stoll brother was pointing and all conversation ceased.

They stared.

“Not again,” Sapphire said with a sigh.

Hovering over the head of each magician were glowing holographic symbols. Sadie had a bunch of black feathers, Cleo had a yellow scroll and Alyssa had a green goose.

Chiron rolled his eyes towards the sky like he was asking the gods why stuff like this always had to happen, and then he said, “Hail Sadie Kane, daughter of Osiris. Hail Cleo Gomes, daughter of Thoth. Hail Alyssa Morgan, daughter of Geb.”

“WHAT?!”

Birds fled as hundreds of demigods all shouted at once.


	24. Nico XXIV

“This is impossible!”

“Their gods don’t work like that!”

“What are we supposed to do?”

“We can’t build cabins for _Egyptian_ gods!”

THUD! That was the sound of Nico’s head hitting the ping-pong table. All of the head counselors stopped yelling and looked at him. “One meeting where we don’t all start screaming,” he muttered. “Is that too much to ask?”

“That’s about as likely as a baby cyclops not being heavy,” Travis said.

“Or a baby pegasus not having wings,” Conner added.

“Well actually some pegasi—” Annabeth started to say. She was cut off when Clarisse burst into tears. Jaws dropped. Sapphire, who was sitting across the table from the daughter of Ares, looked almost panicked.

“Clarisse has a point,” she said over the woman’s sobs. “This is too stressful for nine in the morning. We’ll be in the arena. Clarisse will be beating me up.” She shadow travelled Clarisse and herself out of the room before anyone could say anything. Nico knew from his sister’s fast pace that she had been taking some extreme liberties with the truth. None of the other counselors had believed a thing she said either. Will rolled his eyes towards the ceiling when Sapphire ignored his prescription to not do any Underworld-y things.

Katie glared at the Stolls, apparently having decided to blame them for the situation. “Great job guys, you lost us the only counselor who actually knows the Egyptians.” 

“Not true,” Clovis pointed out with a yawn. “Nico worked with Walt…Anubis…Walt…that guy while they were preparing to defend the Underworld. Underworlds.” He blinked and began massaging his temples. “Is anyone else getting a headache?” A few people nodded.

Chiron looked at Nico, who hadn’t actually said anything audible until his head had hit the table. “Nico, what do you think?”

All eyes turned to Nico. “I think this is a one-time thing,” he said. Sadie had been put into Cabin Thirteen because Hades had the greatest similarity to Osiris, according to Chiron. She had talked with Nico and Sapphire and they had all agreed that the claiming of Egyptian magicians was not normal and would probably (read: hopefully) never happen again. They weren’t actually sure what had caused the claiming though. “Walt came into camp plenty of times and he was never claimed by Set.” 

“We could just leave it and see what happens,” Percy suggested.

“I like that idea,” Jason said.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Annabeth said. Percy stuck his tongue out at her, she elbowed him and they both laughed. 

“Leaving things alone is not what I’m good at,” Leo admitted “But I’ll give it a try.”

“All in favour?” Piper asked. Every counselor at the table raised their hand except for Clovis.

He had fallen asleep.

* * *

The Egyptians stayed with them for three days until a nine-year-old newbie from the Athena cabin asked why they didn’t just fly back using the chariot if they wanted to stay away from Manhattan.

Cue facepalming from all the older campers.

They did want to keep the magicians away from Manhatten though. They had gotten nothing from Olympus about the Serapis problem, not even from Mr. D, so there was a pretty good chance that Zeus was miffed about having to be helped by both demigods _and_ Egyptian magicians. None of the magicians wanted to take the chance of being disintegrated, there were no pyramids or obelisks at either of the camps, Walt was bogged down in the Egyptian Underworld, and Will wasn’t allowing Sapphire or Nico to shadow travel. All of that added up to not having a way for all of the girls to get back to Brooklyn House until the new kid made his obvious suggestion. 

Anyway, it was clear by the first of their sword fighting lessons that Nico saw that the three girls were most certainly not demigods of any kind. It’s not that they weren’t passable sword fighters it was that the Celestial Bronze went right through them like they were regular mortals.

Also, Sadie’s dad hadn’t become a god until after he died. There was that.

Nico hardly saw Sapphire that entire time. She spent most of her time working at the camp store, or with the magicians or her group of friends or Leo or the group from the Athena and Demeter cabins that was studying something in the woods that they called “Bunker Four”. Basically everyone except for him. One of the magicians, Alyssa, turned out to be a cousin of Mike Morgan from the Hecate Cabin, which Sapphire and Lacy had suspected but hadn’t been totally sure about.

When she wasn’t with one of them she was with Clarisse. Clarisse, who was going to be a mother. The entire camp knew about that now and Nico was wondering how he’d managed not to notice the extra wisp of soul that was hanging around the daughter of Ares. Chris was completely freaking out. He’d apparently gotten a demigod dream visit from Ares who threatened to kill him slowly and painfully. No word from Olympus as to whether that was actually going to happen so Chris was on his toes all the time. 

It stopped being funny to tap him on the shoulder and watch him jump three feet into the air when Clarisse started threatening everyone who did with her electric spear.

“Hey, Will?” Nico asked on the second day after he’d lugged an electrocuted son of Iris to the infirmary.

“Yes, Nico?” Will said.

“When did camp get so strange?”

“I wish I knew.” 

When he went down to the arena later that day with Kyra and they saw Ed and Mike kissing behind the weapons shed he rolled his eyes up towards the sky. “Should I say something?” he asked Kyra. She nodded. He shouted at the two boys and they jumped apart. “You should be on the other side of the shed! Everyone can see you there!”

“Thanks, Nico,” Mike said, his face flushed. Ed scowled at him with his face sporting a similar crimson hue.

“Any time, guys!” Nico said.

“I think you’ve embarrassed them enough,” Kyra said, leading him away, grinning.

On the third day, Sapphire’s cat jumped on Nico’s head and wouldn’t get down for a full four hours. This was because, in trying to do some sort of Egyptian figurine magic, the Hecate cabin had set a pack of wild dogs on Camp Half-Blood.

“If the magicians don’t leave soon there won’t be a camp for them to leave,” Nico commented to Sapphire as he tried to pry the terrified cat off of his head.

“I hate to say it, but I agree,” Sapphire said grimly. “It’s more the Hecate kids than Sadie, Cleo, and Alyssa, but Lou Ellen just keeps goading them into teaching them spells.” She tugged at Jay’s middle and Nico yelped and stumbled into his bunk as the cat’s claws dug into his scalp. “I think we might just have to leave him.”

“Gee, you think?” Nico would never have guessed that someone who could reportedly turn into a nine-hundred pound Spartoi sabre-toothed cat would be such a scaredy-cat.

Somewhere in the middle of the Great Wild Dog Roundup (that was definitely in the running for that year’s camp bead) the Athena kid asked his innocent question about the flying chariot and the magicians finally had a way home.

“I’m going to miss you lot,” Sadie said as she packed her bag in the Hades cabin. “You get to do a lot of cool stuff here.”

“You’re welcome back any time,” Sapphire said. She was sitting on her bunk petting her cat and Nico was standing in the doorway of the washroom cleaning the scratches her cat had left in his head with an alcohol wipe. “You know, once we’re sure our gods don’t want to kill you.”

The magicians left just after dinner. They had IMed Brooklyn House to let them know that they were on their way there and were just waiting for Butch and Percy to lead the pegasi out to the track so that they could take off. None of the magicians could ride, which was why they couldn’t just take the pegasi.

“For the last time guys, you’ll get sugar cubes after you get back from Brooklyn,” Percy said. After a pause where the two pegasi presumably made some sort of snarky comment, Percy said, “I know you don’t like Brooklyn. You’ll be fine, Butch’ll be with you.”

Greek pegasi didn’t like Brooklyn, where the Egyptian magicians lived. Big surprise.

“Well, this is it,” Sadie said when the chariot was ready.

Lacy gave her a hug. “I’ll see you when school starts.” Ed groaned quietly and muttered something about not wanting to think about school yet. 

“Bye guys,” Alyssa said. “Thanks for having us.”

“It was a…distinct pleasure,” Chiron said, clearly remembering that afternoon’s wild dog fiasco. “Have a safe trip.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Butch muttered. He took the reins, the three magicians piled into the back and the chariot took off. Percy, Chiron, Nico, Sapphire, Ed and Lacy watched until the vehicle and its occupants became just a spot in the sky.

When Nico and his sister got back to their cabin there was a dead mailman waiting in the corner of the room. “Did Dad send you?” Nico asked when he saw the ghost. The dead mailman chattered in the language of shades. Nico rolled his eyes. Why could the ghosts Hades sent to his children never speak English? Or at least Ancient Greek. “What does he want?” The mailman chattered again and then melted away into the shadows.

“Dad’s summoned us,” Nico announced. “We have to see him tomorrow.”

**_“I never would have guessed,”_** Sapphire said dryly, looking at the corner where the ghost had disappeared. By ‘dryly’ Nico actually meant ‘in Shade’; Sapphire’s language processor was going again. Nico decided that he was too tired to tell her. **_“Any idea what he wants?”_**

Nico frowned. “Probably another quest,” he guessed.

**_“Camp’s almost over.”_** Sapphire walked over to her bunk and sat down beside Jay. She began petting him absentmindedly. **_“Would he really give us a quest now?”_**

Nico shrugged. Their dad didn’t really care much about timelines. He worked on the mortality clock. As long as his children were alive they could work for him. Once they were dead they just weren’t as useful.

Sometimes Nico had a hard time convincing himself that Hades cared, even though he knew he did.

“You know dad.”

**_“I met him once.”_** Sapphire sighed. **_“We’d better listen to him anyway. You tell Percy and Kyra, I’ll tell Leo and Ed. Then we can go about getting to the Underworld without dying.”_** Notwithstanding the fact that they were the children of Hades and should be able to get to their dad’s kingdom without much trouble.

Nico was just a little confused. “Why do I have to tell Kyra?”

Sapphire snorted. **_“Correct me if I’m wrong, but she is your girlfriend. Unless you’ve broken up in the last hour.”_**

Nico blushed. “Lights out,” he said so that he could avoid answering.

Sapphire rolled her eyes and climbed into bed. Jay curled up beside her. **_“Goodnight,”_** she chattered.

“Night.” Nico turned out the lights.

* * *

FINIS


End file.
